Kylie Gifis is a 17-year-old poet from Elizabethtown, New York, a small town near the Adirondacks. When she's not cooped up in her library reading books or writing them, she spends time with her two younger sisters, and her cat named Matteo who often interrupts her work by walking across her keyboard. She enjoys cooking, theatre, running for her school team, traveling, learning new cultures, and reading enough poetry for a lifetime. Readers are fascinated to learn the process of writing a poem. Can you tell us about your process and how long a poem takes to compose? For me,...
Meet the Poets: Loic Ekinga
Loic Ekinga Kalonji is a Congolese poet, storyteller, and a screenwriting student. His work in poetry and fiction focuses on the human experience by adopting a surrealist approach to storytelling. He has been featured in many online publications such as Type/Cast Magazine, Ja. Magazine, Poetry Potion, and The Kalahari Review. His chapbook Twelve Things You Failed at As A Man Today was an honourable mention by JK Anowe for Praxis Magazine Online. His short story 'Loop' has been adapted into a short film by Director Vuyani Makausu and is currently in post-production, a finalist of Poetry Africa's Slam Jam competition....
Welcome to New Author: Shelley Nolan
Shelley Russell Nolan is an avid reader who began writing her own stories at sixteen. Her first completed manuscript featured brain-eating aliens and a butt-kicking teenage heroine. Since then she has spent her time creating fantasy worlds where death is only the beginning and even freaks can fall in love. A member of Romance Writers of Australia, Australian Romance Readers Association and Queensland Writers Centre, Shelley regularly attends workshops and writers festivals to meet other writers and readers. Born in New Zealand, moving to Australia with her family when she was seven, Shelley currently lives in Central Queensland with her...
Welcome to New Author: T. R. Thompson
Tom is an Australian speculative fiction author. He lives in Belgrave on the outskirts of Melbourne with his wife and two young sons. When not writing or reading he spends too much time gaming and taking long meandering walks through the forest that always seem to end up at a tavern. The Blood Within The Stone is his first novel. It will be available in July 2017. In the isolated traders’ town of Greystone, two young thieves named Wilt and Higgs scratch out a living on the street. Both have quick minds and even quicker fingers, but Wilt has another...
Welcome Elizabeth Foster
We're really pleased to welcome our newest author to the Odyssey family: Elizabeth Foster. Elizabeth lives in Sydney, and her debut novel, Esme's Wish, will be published in the first half of 2017. When fifteen-year-old Esme Silver objects at her father’s wedding, her protest is dismissed as the actions of a stubborn, selfish teenager. Everyone else has accepted the loss of Esme’s mother – so why can’t she? But Esme is suspicious. She is sure that others are covering up the real reason for her mother’s disappearance – that ‘lost at sea’ is code for something more terrible, something she has...
Welcome to new author: Laura E. Goodin
American-born writer Laura E. Goodin decided at seven years old to be a writer. Over the decades, she's worked as a reporter, editor, technical writer, media manager, web-content developer, writing teacher, and freelance writer, but it was only as she entered her 40s that she determined to return to her childhood dream of writing stories that would amaze and entertain. She was transmuted in the crucible of the 2007 Clarion South Workshop, and went on to gain a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Michael Moorcock's New Worlds, Andromeda...