Afflatus Apparatus

Artist & Writer | Ebony Haywood

Ebony Haywood is a writer from Southern California who loves cheese pizza, anything with avocado, and classic films. She graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills, with a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Master of Arts in English Literature. Her work has been published in literary magazines, including Five on the Fifth, The Seraphic Review, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. You can find her at ZayZoh.com.

Writer | Ivan Niccolai

Ivan Niccolai is an emerging writer. Raised by swinging, globetrotting Christian hippy parents across twenty countries and enjoying the pleasures and instabilities of that lifestyle, Ivan learnt on his own how to drop out of grade school and eventually how to behave appropriately in an office job. He has a short story published in Triple Ampersand magazine and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with two silly cats and a wise partner. His writing themes and obsessions centre around finding joy in being a deracinated dilettante and a cultural outsider. Chief among his many hyper-fixations is scavenging the margins of para-academia and indie publishing houses for kindred thinkers and tasty scraps, both of which he has found in such writers as Mark Fisher, Reza Negerastani, Audrey Satz and Amy Ireland.

Artist | Mark G. Taber

Mark G. Taber was first exposed to the fine arts at about age 10 when he attended an after school art class at the R.I.S.D. Museum in Providence, Rhode Island. That experience started his lifelong passion for the arts. As soon as he received his driver’s license he borrowed the family car on weekends to visit the Boston MFA art museum and ever since he has spent as much time as possible seeing historic and contemporary shows. He was educated at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. It began with a pre-college summer course with a focus on drawing, and eventually this led to a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture degree awarded in 1994. In late 2015 he began using programming scripts to draw.

Writer | Emma Grey Rose

Emma Grey Rose is a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in San Diego, California. Her artwork and writing have appeared in a number of periodicals and publications. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Midsummer Dream House. She received a Certificate of Achievement in Creative Writing and an Associate in English from San Diego Mesa College, and a Bachelors in English with a Minor in Theater from San Diego State University.

Poet | Ruth Towne

Ruth Towne is the author of Resurrection of the Mannequins (Kelsay Books 2025). Poems from her debut collection have appeared in Holy Gossip, The Lily Poetry Review, The Listening Eye, BarBar Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Her poem "So the Sadness Could Not Hurt" received the second-place Grantchester Award from The Orchards Poetry Journal. Her poetry has also appeared in Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism, and Translation.

Annastacia Stegall is a poet and graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. She is currently an adjunct at Gonzaga University and her work has been published in Expressions and BiFrost. Currently, Annastacia lives in the Inland Northwest with her feisty cat, Roscoe.