Find out more about the fabulous writers in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly!
Historical:
George Sand
Cover and title page Artist:
Gloria E. Moses
Neil Allen is a writer and a flight attendant living in Chicago. He has served as an assistant fiction editor for Nashville Review. Neil’s work has appeared issues of Marathon Literary Review and Wrath-Bearing Tree. His story, ‘Out Back‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Amy Bergen is from Columbus, Ohio and currently lives in Maine. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Mid-Level Management Magazine, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Drunken Boat, and other publications. Amy is interested in the present and the future, especially in how we demonstrate cruelty, fragility, and grace within the systems that govern and employ us. Her story, ‘American Heartland‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Pamela Weiler Grayson is a New York City-based playwright and musical theatre writer. Pam’s award-winning shows have been seen in theatres throughout the country. Her play, OBSERVANT, received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and was a Jewish Plays Project Semi-Finalist, a 2024 Broadway World Best New Play nominee, and a 1st Runner Up in the 2025 Women in the Arts and Media Coalition Collaboration Award. Pam’s musical URBAN MOMFARE (composer/lyricist/co-book writer) won a Best Musical award at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival, garnered four stars and a Critics’ Pick from Time Out. Pam is a member of Theatre Now’s International Musical Writers Lab and The Dramatists Guild, as well as a board member of Emerging Artists Theatre. She attended Brown University, Fordham Law School, and The BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. Learn more about Pam Weiler Grayson’s work on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram. Her play, ‘Burning Down the House‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Stefin Kohn is originally from the Pacific Northwest, but she has called the UK home since 2017. With a thirty-year career in professional writing and editing across industries such as healthcare, law, small business and natural resources, she also co-wrote, produced and hosted the Preheated podcast from 2017 to 2021. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing. Her fiction delves into the complexities of memory, family and the places we call home. She is the co-author of the short-story collection Everything Started From Here (submitted), and Stefin’s short story ‘Spring Tide’ was longlisted for the Mslexia Short Story Prize 2025. You can follow Stefin Kohn on Instagram at @stefinwrites. Her story, ‘Standard Operating Procedure‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Julie Morse is a writer and case manager for asylum seekers and lives in Western Massachusetts, where she grew up. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, VICE News, The Rumpus, The Believer, Pacific Standard, among other publications. Julie’s story, ‘The Pig Butcher‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Susie Ryder works as a book editor and English teacher, but writing is her real passion. Susie was recently awarded Highly Commended Runner Up in a short story writing competition judged by Paula Hawkins, and in 2024 she was long-listed for the Mslexia Novel Competition for her first novel, Remains. Susie Ryder lives in South Yorkshire, England, with her husband and young son. Learn more about Susie’s work at her website or reach her at susiejryder@gmail.com. Her story, ‘The Beginning of Always‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Sandeep Sandhu is a writer from London. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award, and was shortlisted/a finalist for the American Literary Review Short Story Competition, the Columbia Review Winter Print Competition, and The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Sandeep is an Assistant Fiction Editor at the Los Angeles Review and has edited pieces that appeared in places like The Best American Short Stories 2025 (e. Celeste Ng). His story, ‘Joy All Round‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Crystal Schubert is a reader and a writer based in Richmond, Virginia. Crystal is currently working toward her MFA in Creative Writing, and her work can be found in Literary Mama, Points in Case, and wicked alice, among others. Her story, ‘Murphy Cole, Art for Sale‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
J.J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright living on Prince Edward Island (Epekwitk). He has published 25 books, including: An Unauthorized Biography of Being; Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be; A Visit to the Kafka Café; Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles; Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement; Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential; Acting on the Island; As You Continue to Wait; and My Post-Holocaust Second Generation Voice: History / Memory / Identity. Over 60 of his one-act plays have been performed in Canada and the United States, including The Waiting Ends, The Entrance-or-Not Barroom, Freesias in Whiskey, Back to Back, No End in Sight, Flowers for the Vases, Sea Monsters, More Than Money, Imaginative Drinking, A Play of Disbelief, Memory Sounds, and In a Washroom of a Prestigious Art Gallery. J.J. has also had several full-length plays performed—The Franz Kafka Therapy Session, The Golden Age of Monsters, and A Television-Watching Artist—as well as the audio plays, In Becky’s Name, A New Map, The Professor’s Ashes, Diogenes’ Lantern, and Laugh for Sanity. J.J. Steinfeld’s play, ‘Counting on Love‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka is an award-winning Nigerian-Igbo writer, screenwriter, creative professional, and pharmacist. She won First Prize in the 2025 Iskanchi Magazine Prize, the Letters Category in the 2025 LIGHT Magazine Contest, second prize in the 2024 Dissolution Climate Change Essay Contest (Litfest Bergen, Norway), and was runner-up in the 2024 South African Bloody Parchment Horrorfest. She is a recipient of the Kokonut Head Writing Residency and was shortlisted for the 2025 Afro-Abebi Award for Non-Fiction, the 2026 Dirges for Harmattan Poetry Contest, the 2024 Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. Her poem was selected for the PIN Best Poems of 2024 Anthology. Udochukwu-Nduka is also the inaugural winner of the 2023 Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation Monthly Writing Contest (Lagos Chapter) and has received multiple awards from Shuzia, Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation, and D’Lit Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Isele Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Brittle Paper, Harriet’s House, Carmalaky, BIPOCrypha, Lagos Review, Akpata Magazine, Feminists in Kenya, Ngiga Review, World Voices Magazine, Mythic Picnic, Libre Lit, Aprilcentaur, Valiant Scribe, 22/28, Conscio Magazine, and in the international anthologies Invisible Chains: Stories of Migrants, and Indaba Bafazi SFF Anthology, among others. Her story, ‘Devotion‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
Featured Writer from the Annals of History:
George Sand (1804-1876) became a best-selling author in her late twenties with the 1832 publication of her first novel, Indiana. Sand was a prolific novelist and playwright, and her work remained highly popular throughout her lifetime. Her novels frequently centered around female protagonists and issues of social class and gender roles. George Sand was politically active in France and a champion for the poor and for the rights of women. She was born into a fairly wealthy family and was raised by her paternal grandmother after her father’s death when she was four. As an adult, George Sand’s social circle included Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert. Sand was considered scandalous by many in her day for her pen name (male), her clothing (often trousers), her cigar smoking, her attendance at gatherings for men, her divorce from the father of her two children, and her subsequent many romantic affairs, including with the composer Frederic Chopin, who lived with George Sand for several years at the country estate she inherited from her grandmother. George Sand’s story, ‘Queen Coax‘ appears in the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly.
The Lemonwood Quarterly’s Spring 2026 featured artist:
Gloria E. Moses got her start in the art world as a metalsmith, but she soon found herself drawn to the brilliant luminosity of oil painting and has never looked back. Early in her career, Gloria studied under Patrick Betaudier, the Trinidadian-born founder of the Atelier Neo Medici, in Monflanquin, France. Gloria now works primarily with oils and pastels, creating marvelous pieces known for their striking play of light across the canvas. Her work has been exhibited in shows at the Illinois State Museum, the McCord Gallery, the Robert F. DeCaprio Gallery, the Laura A. Sprague Gallery, and various other exhibits across the Chicago area, including the Alliance of Fine Arts “Best of the Best” Exhibit. Gloria’s art studio is located on the outskirts of Chicagoland, in the house she shares with her amazing husband. When she’s not pouring life onto canvases in her studio, Gloria can be spotted birding along the coast of Lake Michigan—her eyes always peeled for that special dance of light. Gloria E. Moses’s painting, Dancer in the Red Dress, is featured on the cover of the Spring 2026 issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly. Eleven additional pieces by Gloria E. Moses appear as the title page artwork for the stories in this same issue. You can see more of Gloria’s fabulous artwork on her website Gloria E. Moses Fine Art.