Online Issue No.10
Love Letters to the Forgotten
Issue Editor: Juliette Sandoval
FROM THE ISSUE EDITOR:
Dear Reader,
This issue was initially intended to be released in February of 2022, in response to the prompt “Love Letters to the Forgotten.” The task was simple: writers were called to pen a letter, it could be to anyone, or perhaps not even a person at all. From this simple theme emerged a diverse range of work which seem to traverse the breadth of the human experience. Indeed, love, loss, memory, fear, desire and existential interrogations all manifest throughout in equal turns. I was not the original editor of the issue but came in retrospectively to put the pieces together. When I wrote “Valentine’s Day” for this call, I was thinking about searching for meaning amidst a world that can seem so meaningless at times, thus “the angels go here and there/searching for purpose/in the shaded grove/and I amongst them/seeking the past in the present.”
While editing the issue I could not help but notice that this underlying idea of "searching" seemed prevalent across the various works. Ultimately what ties these pieces together is an interrogation of time, of meaning, of the self and of the other. As one of our contributors, Stephen Mead asks in “One Year,” “A year, a year, but what is time?." This is echoed by contributor BEE LB who asks in “miss you. would like the chance to know you,” “are you close? do you know me?/are you telling me from somewhere i can’t hear?/do you think i’m silly to ask? […].” It seems that we all had our own questions to pose to the world or perhaps to the one that got away, all of which comes out in this issue.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times; after all, whose life has not been transformed? Who has not looked at how the world has changed in recent years and had questions, asking why, asking how did we get here? Indeed, if there is anything that has felt persistent in the past couple years it’s been a sense of inconsistency, of restlessness. Our Love Letters to the Forgotten takes on the uncertainty of our times and publishing the issue in retrospect feels as appropriate as anything else within the strange era we find ourselves in.
Here then I attempt to put the pieces back together of what has been lost, and I offer this issue to you as a mediation on memory, on time and on meaning. I hope you enjoy the issue and find answers which resonate.
Yours Truly,
Juliette Sandoval
Issue Editor
Special Thanks to the Inscape Staff who made the original call and editorial selections.
Dear Reader,
This issue was initially intended to be released in February of 2022, in response to the prompt “Love Letters to the Forgotten.” The task was simple: writers were called to pen a letter, it could be to anyone, or perhaps not even a person at all. From this simple theme emerged a diverse range of work which seem to traverse the breadth of the human experience. Indeed, love, loss, memory, fear, desire and existential interrogations all manifest throughout in equal turns. I was not the original editor of the issue but came in retrospectively to put the pieces together. When I wrote “Valentine’s Day” for this call, I was thinking about searching for meaning amidst a world that can seem so meaningless at times, thus “the angels go here and there/searching for purpose/in the shaded grove/and I amongst them/seeking the past in the present.”
While editing the issue I could not help but notice that this underlying idea of "searching" seemed prevalent across the various works. Ultimately what ties these pieces together is an interrogation of time, of meaning, of the self and of the other. As one of our contributors, Stephen Mead asks in “One Year,” “A year, a year, but what is time?." This is echoed by contributor BEE LB who asks in “miss you. would like the chance to know you,” “are you close? do you know me?/are you telling me from somewhere i can’t hear?/do you think i’m silly to ask? […].” It seems that we all had our own questions to pose to the world or perhaps to the one that got away, all of which comes out in this issue.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times; after all, whose life has not been transformed? Who has not looked at how the world has changed in recent years and had questions, asking why, asking how did we get here? Indeed, if there is anything that has felt persistent in the past couple years it’s been a sense of inconsistency, of restlessness. Our Love Letters to the Forgotten takes on the uncertainty of our times and publishing the issue in retrospect feels as appropriate as anything else within the strange era we find ourselves in.
Here then I attempt to put the pieces back together of what has been lost, and I offer this issue to you as a mediation on memory, on time and on meaning. I hope you enjoy the issue and find answers which resonate.
Yours Truly,
Juliette Sandoval
Issue Editor
Special Thanks to the Inscape Staff who made the original call and editorial selections.
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Calling For Her
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Interior
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One Year
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Valentine's Day
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Remember when we thought we heard the ocean then?
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miss you. would like the chance to know you.
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Sunshine in a Ziplock Bag
Raquel Reyes-Lopez
The moon spreads celestial marmalade into night sky. Stars peek only to pry the gap of sorrow wide open. I close my eyes. Two hours of sleep. I awake tempted to bite down on lip until it bleeds fig red. 40-hour work week the day after you died, American tragedy, for those in poverty living paycheck to paycheck. I cannot afford to stop and rest.
I put a plaid shirt in a Ziplock bag at the edge of my bed where sun will hit. I dress in confusion, grab at winter tights, sanity will depend on how much compression I feel to fake safety. I need the sensory of something holding my thighs, so I don’t drop onto floors not made to catch me. I don’t care about today’s heat wave, give me layers, so I do not crumble in the arms of my toddlers when they hug me.
I am so minimal this Monday. I wish I could be more for them than just jumbo crayons, bubbles, and baby shark. At the table I watch as they art. Delicate fine lines and big scribbles on construction paper. A few of them draw their house. They talk about how mom, dad, and their self are always at home. Safety, love, routine, and they have reassurance to carry with them forever. I wish I could be them today, stuck in forever, no concept of time, and how quickly it moves. “Teacher look!” I smile. I tell them how I am so proud of them for loving their family.
The intercom announces black flag today. No outdoor play. God has stopped my attempt at a planned-out heat stroke. It was too much to ask to faint on the playground, so maybe then I could see you, in this moment of unconsciousness, because I can’t find you in dreams.
Lunch comes. Clock in. Eight-hour shift is over. On my commute home I think of you. I have cried so much already. I’m afraid to cry, again. I cannot remedy this emptiness knowing this world no longer has you alive in our house. There’s no manual of simple tangible acts to process this. I could write in my journal lines of violence like; I rip the wings of hummingbirds, dip their beaks in honey, burn their hearts over the stove with hope that this will bring you back, but it won’t.
I sit in my car a little longer. Not fully ready to walk into an empty room. I get out of the car and slowly walk into the house. I remind myself to breathe. I open my bedroom and take off my clothes. I quickly pull out the plaid shirt from the Ziplock bag. It is so warm from all the heat it absorbed throughout the day. I put it on. It feels as if we’re embracing one another again, and I do not want to let go.
I put a plaid shirt in a Ziplock bag at the edge of my bed where sun will hit. I dress in confusion, grab at winter tights, sanity will depend on how much compression I feel to fake safety. I need the sensory of something holding my thighs, so I don’t drop onto floors not made to catch me. I don’t care about today’s heat wave, give me layers, so I do not crumble in the arms of my toddlers when they hug me.
I am so minimal this Monday. I wish I could be more for them than just jumbo crayons, bubbles, and baby shark. At the table I watch as they art. Delicate fine lines and big scribbles on construction paper. A few of them draw their house. They talk about how mom, dad, and their self are always at home. Safety, love, routine, and they have reassurance to carry with them forever. I wish I could be them today, stuck in forever, no concept of time, and how quickly it moves. “Teacher look!” I smile. I tell them how I am so proud of them for loving their family.
The intercom announces black flag today. No outdoor play. God has stopped my attempt at a planned-out heat stroke. It was too much to ask to faint on the playground, so maybe then I could see you, in this moment of unconsciousness, because I can’t find you in dreams.
Lunch comes. Clock in. Eight-hour shift is over. On my commute home I think of you. I have cried so much already. I’m afraid to cry, again. I cannot remedy this emptiness knowing this world no longer has you alive in our house. There’s no manual of simple tangible acts to process this. I could write in my journal lines of violence like; I rip the wings of hummingbirds, dip their beaks in honey, burn their hearts over the stove with hope that this will bring you back, but it won’t.
I sit in my car a little longer. Not fully ready to walk into an empty room. I get out of the car and slowly walk into the house. I remind myself to breathe. I open my bedroom and take off my clothes. I quickly pull out the plaid shirt from the Ziplock bag. It is so warm from all the heat it absorbed throughout the day. I put it on. It feels as if we’re embracing one another again, and I do not want to let go.
Mixtape my Amor Letters
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A truth
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Simpler Times by Lorraine Wangsawidjaja
open letter to the kindred spirit I lost
Celine Pun
I rather let our relationship die than do anything about it.
It was not hard to gravitate towards you. You were outrageous in many ways. You were brilliant. A controversial intellectual. You shot a flurry of unearthly questions, questions my mind was not brave enough to curate and explore. The cultural revolution your family fled gave you a third eye that tasted every crevasses of the shadows. You listened to the sizzles of the ghosts. I gifted you slivers of the environmental topics I was learning, desperate to find the narratives left behind. You built cathedrals from your angles. Your imagination would be the envy of any economist.
Your thoughts swirled a beautiful language of wonder and curiosity, but your illusions to maintain masculinity often ruined it for me. I watched you whip your ideas into tornadoes. Misunderstandings shattered into tears. I wondered if your conviction could be tamed. It was the most cinematic.
In the beginning, you helped me untangle my concerns of a boy who might have been too friendly. You slowed the spirals that caged my mindspace. Nobody listened like you did. You offered to walk me there with a non-suspicious alibi—a stranger fixing my bike brakes that detached—just in case that boy asked too many questions. You offered to wait, until I texted I was fine, and when I bolted from that room, you skateboarded by my side to our people at the laboratory. You were there for me.
One evening, we skateboarded to the building with the windowless room. We raced under trains of chairs. I remember giving the rock candy and gummies you liked, when we played the comedic airplane movie. I remember liberating eight burritos from the dining commons, packing them in every pocket of my parka, because you had not had dinner.
It was an honest study session: me with my nuclear energy readings and you and our physics friend with both of your Lagrangian Mechanics homework set. Within one hour, I finished a chapter and you both finished one problem. I challenged you both to a chess celebration. We nearly died when you whipped out the strawberry whiskey. Every piece captured, a shot, you proposed. You did not know my father’s words sharpened and slashed from alcohol when you offered to drink for me. I saw you become a better version of yourself when you were plastered on that hallway couch. You showered love in a video call with your high school girlfriend. You quaked about Indigenous injustice. You seemed to unlock another layer of your humanity. Liquid honesty. We waited until the witching hour before bringing you home. The next morning, I quickly tucked away the half-drunk strawberry whiskey I found in the communal fridge.
You invited me over to your first college apartment by the liquor store and abandoned gas station. I traded sunsets to grind stoichiometry to your Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5, and Japanese folk music. We stayed up watching Studio Ghibli. You buried us in blankets. I woke up on your white leather couch to pass out in a school bus for a field trip one early morning.
You were surprised I played Clash Royale because they made fun of you. A children’s game. A waste of time. You invited me to your clan that connects you with your brothers overseas. You turned the video call camera to my face and told them I was your mythical friend. You took long study breaks, challenging me to battles. I was honored to be worthy of an opponent.
You invited me out with everyone to grab munchies at the local Habit one evening. I accepted the invitation even though I was not hungry. Even though caffeine trembled my body with anxiety, I sipped Starbucks green tea frappuccino to bask in your presence.
You invited me to join your housing group for the following year. A spacious house with a jacuzzi. I said no because I never lived with boys before. I remember nobody in your housing group was familiar with checks, so you venmoed me two thousand five hundred dollars to write one for you. I sat in the back of the Jeep to help deliver it and we went for In and Out afterwards. It was my first hot chocolate from there.
And then you fled. You left everything behind and booked a flight back home across the sea. The pandemic scared everyone. I invited you to every Zoom meeting, a holy space of study sessions and game nights. We craved connection. Everyone downloaded Clash Royale. They joined your clan too. But you were reluctant to spend time with us on Zoom. I was scared to lose you from social distancing. I was a spider shooting threads that struggled to stick.
When you came back in the late summer, you were furious everyone was dating. You refused to support me for dating your best friend. He was my first boyfriend. You were scared that we would shatter the friend group dynamic and you were right. A lot of things happened, but I refuse to believe it was completely from the intimacy I grew with him.
When you came back in the late summer, you brought your high school girlfriend and you tried many things for the first time. I saw the wonderland rabbit in your soul ripple your sense of time. We drove the rickety truck to the recreation center so you could share your tennis obsession with us at two am. I remember squeezing seven people in a five-seater Jaguar to run in the rain in the mountains. You told us you preferred to go camping instead of a day hike. We went to get gas and you got out to cleans the windows. We sold furniture we found on the streets of the college town for our beer fund. We grew dark and sunkissed from hours of soccer and spikeballs. You let me redo my serves before I was a woman. I remember beach walks and dinner parties. I loved making Japanese curry with you, when you saved me a bowl before drowning the curry with chicken chunks. You taught me rangiri. You made thousands of honey butter toast. You left me after you beat the eggs for the melon pan we were going to make together to play tennis
.
I remember a night of homemade hot pot, our cheeks pink from Tsingtao, where I tried to tell you how much it hurt to be mocked for being a liberal or a woman. You had the audacity to lecture me about the impact of being called sexist or racist, about how these accusations could strip you of respect and opportunities.
Then, you and your girlfriend broke up. I wanted to be there for you, to make you the curry you liked, but you kept canceling the plans I initiated. You do not know how excited I was when I heard your ringtone. You only called because my boyfriend did not pick up his phone.
At one point, we quarantined in a small three-roomed apartment with five other people from an asymptomatic situation that was potentially false positive. Every little thing, you lashed at me. The music was too loud.
You watched me with foreign eyes when I came over. I saw a dense cloud of tension bubbling from you.
I wished you would have talked to me. I wished you would have acknowledged my humanity. You were the first to shatter my heart during the pandemic:
I rather let our relationship die than do anything about it.
You did not know how much I weeped, sitting on top of the jungle gym at midnight. You could not bring yourself to set boundaries, so you sent my boyfriend to do them for you.
You do not know that the support group I attended every Tuesday slandered your choices, painted you as an unhealthy friend. I asked them what I could do better, and they did not have any answers either.
I texted you when you broke into that building with the windowless and almost deemed a felon. You crafted hollow promises for conversations.
You left me hanging a sliver of hope that things could get better if we tried.
But you didn’t try.
I grew emotionally exhausted from being in the same space. I watched you pretend we were fine. I wanted to smash your face in the strawberry birthday cake I spent hours baking.
You called my best friend in a drunken haze to cut me off from a snowboarding trip the night before we were supposed to go. That was the third time.
Nobody stood up for me. The friends we share could not be mine anymore.
We could have walked this earth and never crossed paths. Sometimes, I wondered if it would have been better that way. I feel rage when I hear about you now. I banned your name from my vocabulary. I deleted you from my life and only the photographs immortalizing what could have been, remains.
It was not hard to gravitate towards you. You were outrageous in many ways. You were brilliant. A controversial intellectual. You shot a flurry of unearthly questions, questions my mind was not brave enough to curate and explore. The cultural revolution your family fled gave you a third eye that tasted every crevasses of the shadows. You listened to the sizzles of the ghosts. I gifted you slivers of the environmental topics I was learning, desperate to find the narratives left behind. You built cathedrals from your angles. Your imagination would be the envy of any economist.
Your thoughts swirled a beautiful language of wonder and curiosity, but your illusions to maintain masculinity often ruined it for me. I watched you whip your ideas into tornadoes. Misunderstandings shattered into tears. I wondered if your conviction could be tamed. It was the most cinematic.
In the beginning, you helped me untangle my concerns of a boy who might have been too friendly. You slowed the spirals that caged my mindspace. Nobody listened like you did. You offered to walk me there with a non-suspicious alibi—a stranger fixing my bike brakes that detached—just in case that boy asked too many questions. You offered to wait, until I texted I was fine, and when I bolted from that room, you skateboarded by my side to our people at the laboratory. You were there for me.
One evening, we skateboarded to the building with the windowless room. We raced under trains of chairs. I remember giving the rock candy and gummies you liked, when we played the comedic airplane movie. I remember liberating eight burritos from the dining commons, packing them in every pocket of my parka, because you had not had dinner.
It was an honest study session: me with my nuclear energy readings and you and our physics friend with both of your Lagrangian Mechanics homework set. Within one hour, I finished a chapter and you both finished one problem. I challenged you both to a chess celebration. We nearly died when you whipped out the strawberry whiskey. Every piece captured, a shot, you proposed. You did not know my father’s words sharpened and slashed from alcohol when you offered to drink for me. I saw you become a better version of yourself when you were plastered on that hallway couch. You showered love in a video call with your high school girlfriend. You quaked about Indigenous injustice. You seemed to unlock another layer of your humanity. Liquid honesty. We waited until the witching hour before bringing you home. The next morning, I quickly tucked away the half-drunk strawberry whiskey I found in the communal fridge.
You invited me over to your first college apartment by the liquor store and abandoned gas station. I traded sunsets to grind stoichiometry to your Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5, and Japanese folk music. We stayed up watching Studio Ghibli. You buried us in blankets. I woke up on your white leather couch to pass out in a school bus for a field trip one early morning.
You were surprised I played Clash Royale because they made fun of you. A children’s game. A waste of time. You invited me to your clan that connects you with your brothers overseas. You turned the video call camera to my face and told them I was your mythical friend. You took long study breaks, challenging me to battles. I was honored to be worthy of an opponent.
You invited me out with everyone to grab munchies at the local Habit one evening. I accepted the invitation even though I was not hungry. Even though caffeine trembled my body with anxiety, I sipped Starbucks green tea frappuccino to bask in your presence.
You invited me to join your housing group for the following year. A spacious house with a jacuzzi. I said no because I never lived with boys before. I remember nobody in your housing group was familiar with checks, so you venmoed me two thousand five hundred dollars to write one for you. I sat in the back of the Jeep to help deliver it and we went for In and Out afterwards. It was my first hot chocolate from there.
And then you fled. You left everything behind and booked a flight back home across the sea. The pandemic scared everyone. I invited you to every Zoom meeting, a holy space of study sessions and game nights. We craved connection. Everyone downloaded Clash Royale. They joined your clan too. But you were reluctant to spend time with us on Zoom. I was scared to lose you from social distancing. I was a spider shooting threads that struggled to stick.
When you came back in the late summer, you were furious everyone was dating. You refused to support me for dating your best friend. He was my first boyfriend. You were scared that we would shatter the friend group dynamic and you were right. A lot of things happened, but I refuse to believe it was completely from the intimacy I grew with him.
When you came back in the late summer, you brought your high school girlfriend and you tried many things for the first time. I saw the wonderland rabbit in your soul ripple your sense of time. We drove the rickety truck to the recreation center so you could share your tennis obsession with us at two am. I remember squeezing seven people in a five-seater Jaguar to run in the rain in the mountains. You told us you preferred to go camping instead of a day hike. We went to get gas and you got out to cleans the windows. We sold furniture we found on the streets of the college town for our beer fund. We grew dark and sunkissed from hours of soccer and spikeballs. You let me redo my serves before I was a woman. I remember beach walks and dinner parties. I loved making Japanese curry with you, when you saved me a bowl before drowning the curry with chicken chunks. You taught me rangiri. You made thousands of honey butter toast. You left me after you beat the eggs for the melon pan we were going to make together to play tennis
.
I remember a night of homemade hot pot, our cheeks pink from Tsingtao, where I tried to tell you how much it hurt to be mocked for being a liberal or a woman. You had the audacity to lecture me about the impact of being called sexist or racist, about how these accusations could strip you of respect and opportunities.
Then, you and your girlfriend broke up. I wanted to be there for you, to make you the curry you liked, but you kept canceling the plans I initiated. You do not know how excited I was when I heard your ringtone. You only called because my boyfriend did not pick up his phone.
At one point, we quarantined in a small three-roomed apartment with five other people from an asymptomatic situation that was potentially false positive. Every little thing, you lashed at me. The music was too loud.
You watched me with foreign eyes when I came over. I saw a dense cloud of tension bubbling from you.
I wished you would have talked to me. I wished you would have acknowledged my humanity. You were the first to shatter my heart during the pandemic:
I rather let our relationship die than do anything about it.
You did not know how much I weeped, sitting on top of the jungle gym at midnight. You could not bring yourself to set boundaries, so you sent my boyfriend to do them for you.
You do not know that the support group I attended every Tuesday slandered your choices, painted you as an unhealthy friend. I asked them what I could do better, and they did not have any answers either.
I texted you when you broke into that building with the windowless and almost deemed a felon. You crafted hollow promises for conversations.
You left me hanging a sliver of hope that things could get better if we tried.
But you didn’t try.
I grew emotionally exhausted from being in the same space. I watched you pretend we were fine. I wanted to smash your face in the strawberry birthday cake I spent hours baking.
You called my best friend in a drunken haze to cut me off from a snowboarding trip the night before we were supposed to go. That was the third time.
Nobody stood up for me. The friends we share could not be mine anymore.
We could have walked this earth and never crossed paths. Sometimes, I wondered if it would have been better that way. I feel rage when I hear about you now. I banned your name from my vocabulary. I deleted you from my life and only the photographs immortalizing what could have been, remains.
Hunk of Junk
Nichole Paetsch
I need you to know that you’ll always be my first, nothing will ever change that. I always look back fondly at the time we spent together even though it was shorter than expected. Remember when we went to Columbus or when I taught Daniel to drive? Gosh we were so young; we weren’t even 18 yet. But with you, I got to see the world brand new. At the end of the day, you saved my life even when it cost you yours. I’ll always love you, 1996 Corolla.
Love,
NP
Love,
NP
END
The Contributors
Lea Abi Zeid Daou: Hailing from Lebanon, Lea is a PhD candidate, filmmaker, writer, and artist. Her research and practice center on human rights, sustainable development, and environmental care. Her work is in equal parts artistic expression and critical inquiry. For more information visit her website:
https://leaazd.weebly.com/
https://leaazd.weebly.com/
Adrian Ernesto is the author of Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, Between the Spine from Picture Show Press, Speaking con su Sombra with Alegría Publishing, La Belle Ajar & We Are the Ones Possessed from CLASH Books and his 6th poetry collection La Lengua Inside Me will be published by FlowerSong Press in 2023. Adrian lives with his wife in Los Angeles with their adorably spoiled cat Woody Gold.
BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; they are a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in Badlung Press, Revolute Lit, Catchwater Magazine, and fifth wheel press, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co.
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com.
Nichole Paetsch is a Pasadena City College alum originally from Cleveland, Ohio. She is currently a student at UC Berkeley pursuing her bachelor's in English.
E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over 40 years in eastern Sicily, where he taught English at the local university. His poetry appeared most recently in Ginosko, Metaworker, Triggerfish, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and Grey Sparrow Review among others. Martin is an alumnus of the Community of Writers. He has published two collections of haiku, Bitter Pills and Smart Pills, and a chapbook, Exile's Choice, just out from Kelsay Books. A full collection, Method & Madness, is forthcoming from Odyssey Press. Martin blogs at: https://emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.com.
Celine Pun (潘珠海) is a Chinese-Vietnamese American food writer, environmentalist, Naturalist Explorer, changemaker, and advocate of environmental justice and food sovereignty. She lives between Los Angeles and Isla Vista, where they are student of Writing and Literature and Environmental Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. In her creative work, she plays with textures and tastes, curating sensory experiences to capture the brutally honest details in their multicultural environment. Their interests are in identities, trauma, dysphoria, food systems, outdoor recreation, minimalism, and chess.
Raquel Reyes-Lopez is slowly reawakening from creative hibernation. She welcomes you to join her in this rebirth. A gentle reminder for her audience she is carving a no pressure journey. Pack your survival kits, extra batteries, and flashlight, because sometimes you have to wait, until she's ready to share.
Sam Risebrow is an English Teacher living in Madrid, Spain with his wife and twin toddlers. He has recently been published in several journals and magazines, and was named in the commended entries for the Plough Prize in 2021.
Juliette Sandoval is a student of English at Pasadena City College.
Sreyash Sarkar is a poet, a painter, a Hindustani Classical musician, and an Applied Physics researcher. Educated in Kolkata, Bangalore, and Paris, he has been extensively featured in El Portal, Muses, Granta etc. His poem was shortlisted among 40 other poets from around the world in an international poetry competition hosted in Yeats' memoir in 2012. He is the youngest polymath to be highlighted in Le Mauricien for his extraordinary achievements. He is currently dividing his time between Kolkata, Paris, and Luxembourg, where he is conducting research. His website is sreysarkar.weebly.com.
Tom Squitieri is a three-time winner of the Overseas Press Club and White House Correspondents' Association awards for work as a war correspondent. Tom is blessed to have his poetry appear in more than 35 publications, anthologies, art shows and the film "Fate's Shadow: The Whole Story," where he shared the Los Angeles Motion Picture Festival "Grand Jury Prize Gold for Monologues & Poetry." He writes most of his poetry while parallel parking or walking his dogs, Topsie and Batman.
Lorraine Wangsawidjaja is a PCC student and a business major who just so happens to do art.
All images are public domain unless otherwise noted