Mike Stanko is a lifelong Long Islander (NY) who began painting and showing his work over 20 years ago. His paintings have been exhibited throughout the tri-state area, including shows at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton and the Empire State Building in New York City. He has been interviewed numerous times on tv and has donated his artwork to many causes over the years such as Breast Cancer walks, Art for ALS, and The Waterkeeper Alliance. He’s been commissioned to do album covers for Caroline Doctorow, and Dan’s Papers in East Hampton has featured him twice in a cover story.  Find him at stankoart.com.
 

LSBassen is the Fiction Editor for Prick of the Spindle. In 2014, Typhoon Media published a novel, Summer of the Long Lives, and the collection Lives of Crime & Other Stories is forthcoming from Texture Press. Finalist for 2011 Flannery O’Connor Award. An original Reader for Electric Lit, won the 2009 APP Drama Prize & a Mary Roberts Rinehart Fellowship; book reviewer for The Rumpus, and many others. You can hear two poems read at 2River. Prizewinning, produced, published playwright (ATA in NYC, OH, NC), find her at lsbassen.com.