Jen Payne
Jen, editor of CREATIVE SOUP, is a writer and the owner of Words by Jen, a graphic design company in Branford, CT. In 2006, she began CREATIVE SOUP as a forum for purely creative endeavors, with the hope of rediscovering her passion for writing in the process. Her essay "How the Universe Moved My Sofa and Changed My Life" was featured in a WOW! Women on Writing essay contest. In addition, Jen has been exploring the combination of words and visual art, creating mixed-media collages, assemblages and art journals, some of which can be seen on CREATIVE SOUP. Her more recent work and musings can be found on her blog, Random Acts of Writing [+ art].

Branford, CT
wordsbyjen@aol.com
www.wordsbyjen.com
Blog: Random Acts of Writing [+ art]

T.J. Buckley
T. J. Googins (nee Buckley) finally married her long-suffering boyfriend this spring and moved back to Connecticut after living in Florida for nearly 18 months. She is trying to jump-start her writing career while continuing to work on a variety of mixed media and other artistic and creative endeavors, including self-published children's books, family trees, unique jewelry, cards & bookmarks and organic cupcakes. She is also a certified Reiki practitioner and a cat whisperer.

Blog: Seven Sisters Arts

Dale Carlson
Author of over 50 books, Carlson has received three ALA Notable Book Awards, the Christopher Award, YALSA nominated Quick Picks for Teens 2005, VOYA Honor Book, ForeWord Magazine's Bronze Book of the Year Award 2004, New York Public Library Best Books for Teens 2000 and 2003. Carlson's books have been Junior Literary Guild selections and International Book of the Month Club selections. The books have been translated into eleven languages. Carlson has lived and taught in the Far East: India, Indonesia, China, Japan. She teaches writing here and abroad during part of each year. She makes her home among her grandchildren Chaney, Jacquelyn, Malcolm, Sam, and Shannon, and her cats in Connecticut.

Madison, CT
bickpubhse@aol.com
www.bickpubhouse.com

Frank Crowley
I'm 66 and singing freely at long last in my own poetry which is starting to pour out in a deeper resonance since a recent trip to Tucson, Az. I tried my first SLAM meet there in January, 2008 ; and I am searching out the nearby open mics in New Haven these days for the immense joy and kick I get in response to my newest writing. I began writing letters to my grandson about 10 years ago, crafting short stories and memoir pieces and , then, dusted off my poetry from early years. Over the last couple of years I have been writing short lyrics, longer narrative poems and now a bonanza crop of travel and spiritual meditations.

I'm creatively retired from Gateway Community College, where I still keep a connection by editing the popular composition reader in use each year: STORIES FROM THE OTHER SIDE, 2007, 4th ed. Pearson Custom. I broker the book, edit it and write for it each new edition; moreover, I travel to interview prospective new writers, as we cull about one-third of the stories from former editions to make room for new work. ALL ROYALTIES go directly to the HAITIAN HEALTH FOUNDATION of Norwich, CT, each year to help support our programs at the HHF Clinic in Jeremie, Haiti.

Madison, CT
danielcrowley2003@yahoo.com

Maggie Dean
"To be able to pursue the creative process through the vehicle of oil paint has afforded me a never ending artistic challenge. Preferring to work "en plein air", I find that each new experience becomes a spark for the very beginning of this "journey". The translucency of oil paints and the richness of their color along with their infinite nuances is such a perfect medium for involvement. It is all encompassing as I struggle to capture that fleeting moment in time. When the timing is right, when the many, many facets of this challenging medium and plein air pursuit come together, I feel very much involved in the moment and consider the experience successful. My brush has the possibility to capture the scene in front of me, and you, the viewer, become a part of it if I succeed. The goal will always be the same: to take the experience and capture it in such a way as to touch in some small way those who happen upon my work. The creative moment, this record of my experience becomes yours to enjoy."

Branford, CT
margaretbdeanstudio@comcast.net
www.margaretbdean.com

C. K. (Cynthia) Homire
Cynthia has lived and worked in New Mexico since 1964--first as a potter in Santa Fe, then as a poet in Taos. In the early 1950s, she studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where a legendary community of painters, potters, poets, dancers, musicians, writers, and others were reinventing the arts in America.

"Yes, I have rubbed shoulders with the pantheon, a few bellies too," she says. "Washed the floor Merce Cunningham danced on, then went leaping through his class. Jitterbugged with Rauschenberg, pointed out morels to John Cage, was instructed by Olson in long night classes to write from my roots, dirt and all, but take time out to dig up a few Mayans in Mexico. Shared steak with William Carlos Williams (he said "I know you"). Cooked a Chinese meal for Eliot Porter and David Brower (before David took to chewing each bite thirty times before swallowing). Breakfast with Brautigan. All these things happen if you are there for them and then maybe you make pots for 30 years and then maybe you write poetry."

Margaret Iacobellis
Margaret Iacobellis has been writing poetry for several years. After the youngest of her four children finished college, Margaret returned to school and received her BA in Literature from Charter Oak College, Hartford, Connecticut. She served for a number of years as Co-Chair of the Guilford Poets Guild. As a long-time member of the Guild and a member of the Shoreline Poets, she helps to arrange poetry readings for the Second Thursday Poetry Series presented at the Greene Art Gallery in Guilford, as well as participating in a yearly poetry seminar at Guilford High School.

She has won several Connecticut Poetry Contest awards. Her poems have been published in "Tidelines of South Florida," the 2004 issue of "Octagon," "An Anthology of Guilford Poets," and "Connecticut River Review," as well as in several issues of "Caduceus" and "Long River Run." Her most recent poem "My Friend Forgets" was published in November 2008 in "Caduceus."

Branford, CT
margiacobellis@sbcglobal.net

Pamela LaRegina
Pamela is a founding member of the Calligraphers' Guild of New Haven. She has taught calligraphy to children and adults for three decades and is a frequent guest lecturer and demonstrator at schools. Her calligraphy has appeared at over 200 special events: on envelopes, placecards, signs, invitations, wedding certificates, geneology charts, certificates of appreciation and resolutions. Pamela's own calligraphy study originated with the John Howard Benson lineage. She has studied with Raphael Boguslav, Arthur Baker, and others.

Branford, CT
pamela@cshore.com
www.supercalligraphics.com
www.alphabetdoctor.com

Purchase Artwork Online

Nathalie Lewis
"I was formally trained in the arts and earned a B.F.A. from the University of Laval in Quebec, Canada. I later went on to pursue advanced studies in Anthropology and worked in Archeology for the city of Quebec for several years.

I am passionate about travel and I had the chance to explored extensively Asia, Europe and North America. Themes and images that I encountered along the way influence my work to this day.

I am now settled in New England where I am pursing a career as an illustrator. I like to work with a variety of media, especially with watercolor and pen and ink. I am inspired by the world around me, by the traditions of many different cultures and the fascinating stories whose threads weave the fabric of the world."

nathalie-lewis@verizon.net
www.nathalielewis.com

Doug Mathewson
Doug Mathewson lives on Connecticut’s eastern shoreline. His short fiction and essay catalogue may be viewed online or is shippable via rail.

In a recent interview with Walter “Lucky” Fung he said, “We are each a work of art in process, a map, a story, a museum. I choose to be a performance space and gallery. My stories are the exhibits. These works of words are retold and switched around often to keep them alive.

When rarely told a story is dead. When it fades beyond memory, then it is extinct.”

Please visit his current project, True Stories From Imaginary Lives, at www.little2say.org.

Guilford, CT
little2say.org
dmathewson@comcast.net

Gemma Mathewson

The idiot’s guide to me
We’re all actors playing ourselves
and if we’re lucky, sometimes
get to play a recognizable
version we can still relate to,
sympathize with.

I long for something projected
into the last balcony,
distilled from a reckless abandon
of improvisation, skewed memory,
and perfect timing. .

I dress in too many colors
from the BIG crayon box,
accessorize like a coral reef crab
camouflaged behind anything available.
I embellish with too many adjectives,
(wincing at escaped superlatives),
peg too many ironies
on the conversational clothesline
where they dangle limp in the dead calm
of more literal lives.

I like people, at least, the idea of them -
delicate meat bags
too easily separated from consciousness
who think they can feel, feel they can think.
And want to be desperately in love
with each and every one of them.
But have been just a few times,
and even now hold a fragile thread
like a life line.

I find four leaf clovers easily.

Watches stop when I wear them.

I love prison stories and time travel stories.
I am also fond of sandalwood soap
cowboy yodeling, black lace.
I hate yak butter tea, jury duty
sun roofs on cars, asparagus.

In my only comprehensible version
of probability, everything has a 50-50
chance of happening, or not.

I am saddest on new years eve
and happiest traveling to any new place.
When reality disappoints I use fantasy -
books when they are at hand,
or interior plots of my own devising.

Guilford, CT
gemop@comcast.net
Museum of Rain

Denise Meyer
Trained as a classical saxophonist, Denise Meyer has been working in public relations and communications for nearly 20 years — first in the arts, as a consultant, and now as Communications Manager for LMT Communications. She is Founding Publisher of Eirini Press, whose first book Sciousness, edited by Jonathan Bricklin, has received critical acclaim. In addition, Denise is writing From Masters to Mortals - Following the Taiji Path to Nonduality.

Guilford, CT
dlmeyer@snet.net
Eirinipress.com

Carol Nicklaus
Carol Nicklaus has spent most of her life making pictures--and often writing about them--from the early walls of her family home through college studies in painting, graphics and literature. From her home in the Midwest, she moved to New York City to work for several years as a magazine editor and then as an illustrator for over 300 published books for children and young adults.

Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Good Housekeeping, and Mademoiselle. She has won awards from ALA, the Christophers, and The American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Always a traveler, she was, not all that long ago, handed a digital camera...and set foot for the first time on St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It was just that simple. The painter’s head got the painter’s hands on a tool of thrilling immediacy and flexibility. The unique vibrancy of SVG compelled the images, and the images inspired the writer...in October of 2004, she published Glimpses/St. Vincent & the Grenadines.

Carol also created the CREATIVE SOUP logo.

Danbury, CT
cnicklaus@comcast.net
www.carolnicklaus.com

Mary O'Connor
Technically, Mary is a retired professional communicator.  In point of fact, she actively continues to build on what she did best throughout her career, pursuing new creative and community service ventures of her choosing. Read her past resume, and you will see her as a newspaper reporter and editor, public relations and marketing consultant, corporate and college communications manager and, lastly, as director of a nonprofit art center. Visit her website today, and you will find her as an award-winning poet and author. Dreams of a Wingless Child, published as a collection of reflections on nature and life, was drawn in great part from her observations of the rhythms and forces of the New England coastline where she lives. A second book, this one non-fiction, is currently in the works on the subject of Joy: Everyday Ways and Places to Find It.

Speaking of joy, when Mary isn't writing or promoting her book through readings and the creative writing workshops that she presents to a variety of community organizations, including the York Correctional Institution, she is apt to be found painting wildlife and scenes of nature with watercolors and acrylics.

Old Lyme, CT
Msocol@aol.com  
www.mary-oconnor.com

Marta Reisman
"Art and writing are critical parts of my self-definition," says Marta. In the field of art, Marta illustrated a book about the Dinka tribe of the southern Sudan, years before the tribe was decimated or banished to Darfur and Chad. In the 1970s, the son of the Dinka chief noticed her ink work in her living room and asked if she were part Dinka. The rest is herstory.

Marta has been writing light verse since elementary school. She wrote the lyrics for her Bryn Mawr college musicals, a poem for Seventeen magazine and commemorates events with celebratory verses.

(She advises the reader to recite Prima Ballerina with an exaggerated 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 rhythmic beat. She is interested in finding an illustrator for Prima.)

Branford, CT
mresnikov@comcast.net

Kimberly Ruggiero
Kimberly Ruggiero came to art after a chemistry degree and a corporate career in the pharmaceutical industry. In 1999, she began her formal training at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, in Old Lyme, CT. She works primarily from life using a limited palette. Her work includes landscape, figure and portraiture. In September 2007, Kimberly gathered several artists and opened the Ruggiero Gallery in Madison, CT to create a repository of contemporary paintings that is informed by classic conventions of representational art. Works are also available at Greenwich Living Antique and Design Center in Stamford. Kim actively supports Lyme disease research and education; a cause of critical importance to Ruggiero who battled severe undiagnosed neurological Lyme disease. She lives in Madison with her husband of 20 years, two teenage children and the world’s greatest black lab named Sam.

Madison, CT
kim@ruggierogallery.com
www.ruggierogallery.com

Suzan Shutan
Suzan Shutan works site specifically, designing ideas and artwork for private and public spaces (elevators, lobbies, storefronts, parks). Considering function, place and community, her work combines a variety of materials with a narrative that becomes social commentary.

Shutan received her MFA from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ and her BFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. She is a recipient of various awards and grants including ones from the Artist Resource Trust, Artslink International CEC Partners, Art Matters, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, and The Bemis Foundation.

Internationally she has exhibited in Canada, Germany, Columbia, Sweden, and Portugal. Her national exhibits include; The Alternative Museum & Abrons Art Center/ Henry Street Settlement in NYC, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and Real Art Ways in CT, Iowa State University in Ames and the Laguna Beach Art Museum in CA.

Shutan has worked for The City of New Haven, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, The Des Moines Art Museum, and has taught Sculpture and Art History as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Quinnipiac University. In addition, she is the owner of Go-Go Consulting, a business that provides grant writing, marketing and development services for non-profit art organizations. She also serves as a juror for public art projects for the CT Commission on the Arts and is on the Visual Arts Advisory Board for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and the Housatonic Museum of Art.

New Haven, CT
sshutan@sbcglobal.net

Mary Anne Siok
Mary Anne works as a procurement director by day and doodles at night. While working in politics, she discovered that abstract expression encourages her sense of creativity while providing a calming affect during a stressful day. As a current government accountant, Mary Anne is excited about the opportunity to stretch beyond her daily linear activities and rediscover her imagination.

masiok@yahoo.com

Martha Link Walsh
Martha has been cutting paper since 1970 when she discovered it serendipitously. A middle school mathematics teacher at the time, she found her passion by coincidence when she picked up paper and scissors to occupy her free time. She has had a studio and gallery in Branford, Connecticut for more than 30 years, and is continually learning more about the art of papercutting and new ways to create art from paper.

The challenge of design is her stimulus most often. Whether it is symmetrical or not, layered or cut from one piece of paper, with many design elements or a specific message that needs to be conveyed through the images...how to put it all together as a cohesive, artistic image is what she is inspired by. "The cutting is the joy of it all for me," she says, "Watching the pieces of paper fall away to uncover the positive and negative of the finished design. It is magic!!"

Branford, CT
marthalinkwalsh@comcast.net
www.marthalinkwalsh.com