Olga Abella has been a professor of literature and creative writing at Eastern Illinois University for 30 years. She is also the department advisor for the English major. Whenever she can get away from class preps and teaching, she rides her bicycle. Being on her bike or walking her dogs frees her mind to envision the world as poetry, and inspires her to write. The two essays she has appearing in this issue of aaduna are more prose poems than essays. Writing poems enables her to handle life in a more manageable way, and to put herself in perspective. Her poems have been published in various journals, including black dirt, CALYX, Urban Spaghetti, The MacGuffin, Natural Bridge, The Mom Egg, Long Island Quarterly, Kalliope, poetrybay.com and others. She has two chapbooks, Grasping to What Is (A Short Book Press) and What It Takes (Birnham Wood Graphics), and a book Watching the Wind (Writers Ink Press).
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today, he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. Mr. Johnson is published in more than 1072 new publications; his poems have appeared in 38 countries, and he edits and publishes ten poetry sites. Mr. Johnson, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prize awards poetry 2015, one Best of the Net 2016, two Best of the Net 2017, and two Best of the Net for 2018. One hundred ninety poetry videos are now on YouTube via Mr. Johnson’s channel, poetrymanusa. He is editor-in-chief of the poetry anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762; editor-in-chief of the poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses available here https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545352089, as well as editor-in-chief of Warriors with Wings: The Best in Contemporary Poetry, http://www.amazon.com/dp/1722130717.