Find out more about the fabulous writers in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly!
Historical:
Angelina Weld Grimké
Cover and title page Artist:
Tina Berrier
Eve Marie Gayley is new to fiction writing. She pays her bills by working multiple part-time jobs, including as an adjunct and in retail. She is currently completing her first collection of short stories, Sneaking Out the Front Door. Her story, ‘Are You a Seeker?‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Helene Grøn is a writer and researcher based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work explores themes of migration, myth, and belonging through fiction, libretto, and poetic nonfiction. Helene has taught creative writing at the University of Copenhagen. Her writing has appeared in Dark Mountain, Peripeti, and in performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Her story, ‘I Hold‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Matthew Hand lives in Cumming, Georgia, where he writes fiction that examines people who live under judgment—moral, divine, or self-imposed—and who find that mercy rarely arrives as comfort. A writer and community theatre actor, Hand approaches storytelling as both confession and performance, asking what faith looks like after certainty has failed. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Susurrus, Half and One, The Watershed Journal, Rock Salt Journal, Rooted Literary Magazine, Tales from the Crosstimbers, and NECKSNAP. His story “A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrection” was nominated for the PEN/Dau Award, and Intimacy Coordination was longlisted for the 2025 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. When he isn’t writing, he can often be found on stage—or in the quiet after the curtain falls. His story, Performative Normalcy During Times of Crisis appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Eli Hastings describes himself as ‘a privileged, cisgender, invisibly queer, white male (and working on it).’ He is a psychotherapist and author of two books, Falling Room (2006), and Clearly Now, the Rain (2013). Shorter works have been published in The Rumpus, The Cimarron Review, Huffpost, and Sky Island Journal, plus he has contributed to several anthologies, including Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power (2013), and Seattle: City of Literature (2015). Eli was profiled (in a non-policing way, he assures us) by KUOW and The Seattle Times as one of “13 for 13: Artists Changing the Landscape of the Arts in the Northwest.” His story, ‘Trespass‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Zoe Pappenheimer is a designer and illustrator living in Western Massachusetts. She is the artist behind Fearless Fashion Magnetic Dolls (Chronicle Books, 2025) and her work has been featured in I.D. Magazine, Frankie Magazine and Uppercase Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in Georgia College’s Arts & Letters Journal, where she was named the winner of their prize for fiction. She was a finalist for the Missouri Review‘s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and longlisted for Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest. You can see more of Zoe’s creations at Zoe Design Works. Her story, ‘Your Brain is Just Fine‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Roger Parris is a playwright, poet, retired social worker, and actor based in New York City. Roger’s work in theater began in 1968 as an actor. As he became more seriously involved in the performing arts, Roger began writing poetry, plays, short stories, and play adaptions of his short stories. He also taught acting and creative writing. Roger’s poetry has been published in the poetry anthologies Revelry and Brilliant Flame, among others. In 2010, he received an AUDELCO award in the category of Pioneer Artist for his body of work in theater. Many of his plays have been produced, primarily in New York. Roger is a contributing author for Gallery & Studio Arts Journal and is currently writing a play, Moment’s Notice. His play, ‘Urges‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Skylar Siben is a writer and director working in theatre, film, and television. In 2024, Party Princess had its premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it received the StageCrafts Spotlight Series Encore Award. Much Ado About Rushing, her adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic comedy set in Greek life, was a quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship 2024. Originally from San Diego, Skylar graduated from the University of Michigan in 2021 with a degree in Theatre Performance: Directing. Since moving to Los Angeles, she has had the opportunity to work on shows such as Gaslit (UCP/STARZ), Tulsa King (Paramount+), True Lies (20th Century Television) and Monarch (Fox Entertainment). Her play, ‘Party Princess‘ was awarded The Lemonwood Quarterly’s 2025 Hononegah Mack Prize of $500 for best play. ‘Party Princess’ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Scott Bradley Smith’s fiction has appeared in Subtropics and Hawaii Pacific Review. His awards include First Prize in the Pittsburgh City Paper Short Fiction Contest and Honorable Mention in the Tucson Weekly Fiction Contest. He is the author of five produced plays and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Scott grew up in Lancaster County—part of “Pennsylvania Dutch Country”—and now lives in Pittsburgh. His story, ‘Gelassenheit‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Danielle Swanson, an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. She worked as a print journalist and attended the American Indian Journalism Institute before teaching college writing courses for the majority of her career. Danielle has a Masters in Professional Writing and American literature. Currently, she is studying Pilates, making TikTok posts, and spending time with her daughter’s dog, Mr. Darcy, while focusing on her creative pursuits. Her story, ‘Tradish‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Jayanti Tamm is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult (Crown.) Her story, ‘Your Sperm is Showing‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Featured Writer from the Annals of History:
Angelina Weld Grimké (1880 – 1958) was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a white mother and a mixed-race father. Relatives on both sides included activist abolitionists, while her paternal grandfather was a slave-owner. Grimké’s father was the second black man to graduate from Harvard Law School. Her parents divorced and Grimké had little or no contact with her mother after age seven. Grimké wrote essays, stories, poetry, and plays, much of which was published in NAACP newspapers. Although much of her work was completed prior to the Harlem Renaissance, Grimké published in several of the movement’s journals, and her social circles included many prominent figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Grimké is best known for the play Rachel (1916), which she wrote in response to the NAACP’s call for works to counter the very popular 1915 racist film The Birth of a Nation. In both Rachel and The Closing Door (featured in The Lemonwood Quarterly, Fall 2025), Grimké addresses racial discrimination, anti-black violence, and its impact on motherhood and the family. Grimké never married or had children. Many of her writings suggest she was lesbian or bisexual. Her story, ‘The Closing Door‘ appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
The Lemonwood Quarterly’s Fall 2025 featured artist:
Tina Berrier is a mixed-media artist who works primarily in acrylics, exploring themes of abstract expressionism. Tina’s work has won numerous awards and has been exhibited at Creative York, HIVE Artspace, York Art Association Galleries, The Art Association of Harrisburg, Café 1500, Gallery at 2nd, Tutoni’s in York, Smith Gallery in New Cumberland, and The Brain Vessel Gallery in Mechanicsburg, PA. Tina is currently a part of the “Nothing Pretty Group,” whose focus is on ‘low-brow’ and pop art. Her art studio is located at The Millworks in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where, along with acrylics, she enjoys working with collage, found objects and assemblage, and digital art. Tina has a college-aged daughter and a recently adopted dog named Penelope. Her painting If Women Were Cryptids #2 (Spirit), can be seen on the cover of the Fall 2025 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly, and eleven additional pieces by Tina appear as the title page artwork for the stories in this same issue.