Faces of The Anthracite Journal
We are very proud of the creative people we have surrounded ourselves with and are now excited to share their work with all of you! Happy Reading! JC/LL
JC Roberts and Lorrie Loughney
Co-Founders - Editors
Warren Cox
Artist Emeritus
Jenny Devala
Cover Design - Poet - Artist
Our Authors and Artists - June 2026
Mary Anne Abdo is an author, poet, and photographer. She graduated from Luzerne County Community College with a degree in Human Services and is the owner of Blue Stained Glass Poetry and Art. She is the self-published author of “Fractured Lollipop Poems of Brokenness Healing and Hope.”
John Baldino is a graduate of Marywood University, Excelsior University, and St. Joseph's College of Maine, and holds a bachelor's and two master's degrees. He is a humanities professor at Lackawanna College, a professional writer, and a performer, having appeared on stages in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland over the last 30 years. He owns and operates Our Cabaret Productions and Baldino Digital. John is a regular contributor to Catholic Insight Magazine, Charity in Truth, Catholic 365, and Artium. Occasionally creative, his writing mostly focuses on matters of moral philosophy, theological analysis, and pastoral theology. In his spare time, he enjoys retrofitting antique technology, terrorizing his nieces and nephews, and binge-watching Star Trek reruns. John lives in Clarks Summit with his dogs, Hubert and Milton.
Kathleen Bednarek is a writer living in Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA from Wilkes University.
Brianna Booker is a contemporary romance author and poet for young and new adults. She earned her BA in Creative Writing & English from SNHU in 2024 and her MFA in Creative Writing (YA Fiction) from SNHU in 2026. Forever stuck in her hometown, she lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband, fueled entirely by love, whimsy, and coffee. She is a legal assistant by day and an avid rom-com consumer by night. She's the Monroe County, PA Poet Laureate and the Editor-in-Chief at Nobody Thoughts. Follow her!
@briannabookerauthor
Michael Czarnecki is a Publisher, Poet, and Consummate Wanderer. As a publisher, he and his wife, Carolyn, have owned and operated Foothills Publishing in the hills of Central New York for the past 40 years; as a poet, his work stretches back as far as they have been hand-stitching their beautiful chapbooks. From Haikus to Daily Spontaneous Poems posted daily on his Facebook page, travel essays to his poems of deep love for nature and Acadia National Park, he never stops asking for poems. He has traveled tens of thousands of miles and has given hundreds of readings and scores of workshops throughout America. He’s shared his love of the written and spoken word at Libraries, writing centers, colleges, high schools, coffeehouses, museums, nature centers, and outdoor venues, promoting the power of poetry throughout America.
Tom Clausen lives in the same house he grew up in Ithaca, N.Y. He curated a daily haiku feature at Cornell University's A. R. Mann Library for 37 years, retiring in 2013, and has been a member of the Route 9 Haiku Group since 2003. He has a substantial published haiku collection: Homework (2000) and Growing Late (2007) published by Snapshot Press; Laughing to Myself (2015) and My Own Heart, 25 Years of Tanka (2021) published by Free Food Press; and One Day-Thirty Years of Little Poems, published by Stark Mountain Press, which received the Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Distinguished Book Award for 2023. Tom enjoys daily walks about the fields, woods, and the nearby neighborhood, taking photos, reading and writing little poems, and listening to the music that has been the soundtrack of his life.
Kimberly Crafton is a Pushcart-nominated writer of narratives, letters, articles, and cultural heritage guidebooks. Her writing is a thoughtful, mystic walk through everyday moments, where unexpected details call out to be noticed and understood. She lives and writes in Dunmore, PA. https://www.craftoncultural.com
Craig Czury grew up in immigrant labor communities of Northeast PA where English wasn't his first language; broken English was, in all its visceral tones and undertones, like poetry. He spent fifteen of his early years hitchhiking North America, working odd jobs and studying with some big poets. A 2022 Fulbright Scholar to Chile, Craig lives in Dunmore, PA where he continues his weekly Life-Writing From Cyberia online workshops. His latest book is And If You Saw Me: New and Selected Prose Poems & Poems from Moonstone Press.
www.craigczury.com
Jenny Davala is a multimedia artist whose works address God, spirituality, gender identity, art history, and morality, and seek to trace the contours of the indescribable. The concepts are expressed through poetry, paintings, music, collage, short films, and video essays; the medium is chosen to best align with the desired vision.
Terrence Dwyer retired from a 22-year career with the New York State Police, is an attorney and professor teaching legal studies at Western Connecticut State University, and is an author and playwright. He is a Gold Medallion Award winner in nonfiction from the Public Safety Writers Association and a featured columnist for Police1.com. An author of three law textbooks, he released his first commercial book, a memoir titled The Badge Between Us: Duty, Marriage, and Family, in February 2026 with Bloomsbury Publishing.
Marty A. Fallon is a writer, visual artist, and editor of The Comrade Quarterly. He is from Scranton, PA, and studied philosophy and classics at Fordham University.
Brian Fanelli is the author of Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books) and co-editor of Currents in the Electric City: A Scranton Anthology (Belt Publishing). His writing has been published in The LA Times, World Literature Today, Main Street Rag, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. Brian is also the co-founder and co-editor of the website The Horror Lounge. He has his M.F.A. from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton University. Brian is an associate professor of English at Lackawanna College
Anastasiya Fluegel is an artist, poet, chef, and mother (all self-taught), and is a member of the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. As a poet and painter, she explores the relationships among people, the world, and the paths they travel, beautifully combining the two forms. She recently participated in an art and poetry pop-up event, The Art of Falling (into place), a fusion of art, poetry, and music at the ARTS Council. Most recently, Anastasiya's paintings were featured in Beyond Words Magazine and the cover art for Quiet Underpinnings, a collection of poetry by local poet Aleathia Drehmer. Currently living and creating in Corning, NY. You can find her creations on Instagram!
@ana.artislife
Diane Funston has been published in journals including Lake Affect, F(r)iction, Tule Review, Still Points Quarterly, among others. Diane served as Poet-in-Residence for Yuba-Sutter Arts and Culture. Her chapbook, "Over the Falls" was published by Foothills Publishing, and she is also a visual artist in mosaics. She lives in California with her husband, Roger, and two rescue dogs.
Roger Funston came to poetry late in life after a long career as an environmental scientist. He met the love of his life (Diane Funston) at an open mic in Tehachapi, CA. Roger began to hone his writing skills at a weekly poetry gathering hosted by Diane. Roger writes about his life journey and his travels. He often finds inspiration roaming the forests and deserts of the Western US.
Tina Gelly is a Commonwealth clerk by day, creative by night. Tina picked up her pen again after a post-college hiatus. She graduated from Marywood University, where she received the poetry award in 1985. She is also a singer-songwriter performing as "Tina Graye," and resides in Throop, PA.
Cas Heid earned her B.S. in Earth and Environmental Science, an M.A. in Creative Nonfiction, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, all from Wilkes University. She is an essayist, poet, and academic scholar whose publications appear in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated No More Haunted Dolls: Horror Fiction that Transcends the Tropes, Dark and Dreary: A Basement Horror Anthology, Nobody Thoughts: A Literary Magazine, Artium Journal, and others. She lives in North-eastern Pennsylvania
Nathaniel J. Houser is a poet and creative writer, a graduate of Miami University, where he studied writing, film studies, and Sociology. He’s a current academic advisor at Purdue Global. He writes poems, sestinas, tankas, sonnets, and villanelles. He has previously published poems at Miami University Howe Writing Center, Inklings, Aardvark Agog, and The Ascent. He lives in Lake Ariel, PA, with his three cats and children. Poetry is a lifestyle in which he listens to the voices of death and love.
Tracey Hogans is a first-time poet. Tracey's son, Spencer, passed away from an illness in 2019, and she started to write poetry as a means to manage her grief. She started going to open mics to read her poems and found that they helped others who had lost someone they loved deeply. She’s a published poet, and recently, Tracey has been leading a Grief Poetry Workshop at Gather Community Space in Wilkes-Barre, aimed at supporting and encouraging people from all walks of life to work through their grief with the power of Poetry.
Melissa Liberatore is a writer of poetry, memoirs, and short stories, as well as a photographer from the Finger Lakes. She recently founded PoetryBuzz Press and is the editor of a new Quarterly publication called PoetryBuzz Review. She dabbles in painting and loves to travel. She currently resides in Western New York.
Ted LoRusso is a playwright, freelance writer, and actor based in Scranton, PA, and New York City. A Scranton native, he is highly active in the local performing arts and literary scenes, having his plays produced in both NYC and Scranton. Ted is a familiar face in the Northeast Pennsylvania (NEPA) creative community, frequently working alongside fellow local writers and participating in grassroots theater projects supported by the Scranton Fringe Festival ecosystem. Attended Marywood College, the University of Scranton, and NYUTe
Jai Montag is a writer, poet, and advocate whose work explores identity, belonging, and human connection. They are the author of Late to My Own Party.
Learn more at:
https://jai-montag-83i0kx.subscribepage.io/
Alice Taylor-McGraw picked up a camera nine years ago, and she hasn’t put it down since. Whether she’s taking shots in her backyard in Dunmore, PA, or an out-of-town location, she tries to capture the splendor of nature—the intricacies of a dahlia, the pattern on a blue jay’s wing—at a particular moment in time. Photography is her passion, not her profession. She’s an amateur photographer hoping to make you smile.
Gina Zanolini Morrison, Professor Emeritus of Global Cultures at Wilkes University, has recently transitioned from academia to theatre and is now a published poet. With a PhD in Human Development, she has always been interested in how cultures shape their modern worlds.
Fascinated by Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia (her husband’s birthplace), she has returned often for three decades to research, teach, and serve as a Fulbright ambassador twice. Her most recent Fulbright project allowed her to vet her play “Women of Nusantara: Their Seen and Unseen Worlds,” based on spiritual stories told to her by working women of Malaysia, Borneo, and Bal
Moni Paige is an experimental poet and visual artist based in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. Her work moves between confessional lyricism and formal experimentation, exploring grief, identity, illness, and spirituality through an existential and often absurdist lens. She's now developing multiple chapbooks, a collection centered on grief and the visceral physicality of illness, and continuing work on a neoexpressionist visual art project now in its second year
Jacquelyn Purdy is a published poet and artist currently living in Scranton. At a young age, her teacher, Miss Maria, encouraged her to begin writing poetry. She served in the United States Marine Corps and attended Marywood University, where she majored in English with a minor in Writing. In November 2017, she began the local poets group called Poets Live, which meets monthly at Wired and Inspired, The Bog, and The Green Frog. She publishes a poetry anthology annually. You can find her books on Goodreads and Amazon.
Marcie Herman Riebe is a bilingual caseworker by day and an aspiring playwright the rest of the time. An import to NEPA, she has been active in the arts for many years. She is a founding member of Voce Angeli (NEPA's only all-female chamber choir) and serves on the board of directors and in the Diva Dramatists writing group with Diva Theater Productions. She is a published poet and produced playwright. She lives in Moosic with her handsome husband, Pete, and their horde of cats: Sam, Dean, Siv, and Freja.
