Board of Directors - Gertrude Press

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Board of Directors

LeAnna Crawford Managing Editor & Board President	LeAnna has always had a special place for the absurd, the extraordinary, the art that pushes the boundaries of what we call art. She’s been an actor, an artist’s model, and everything in between, but all the time a poet. Finally giving in to her secret obsession LeAnna received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2007. Her work has been seen in places ranging from The Oklahoma Review to The Dirty Napkin and many of the worlds in between. LeAnna also teaches writing and English at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, OR and as a direct result has become a stickler for grammar, organization, and flow. This is probably why she’s the newly elected Managing Editor of Gertrude Press. As the Managing Editor LeAnna is looking for unity within the journal and balance (or the intentional asymmetry) of art with art. She loves the way humans experience the world and struggle with expressing that experience. She’s looking forward to keeping up the greatness that’s she’s come to know and love in Gertrude, as well as pushing the old girl out of her comfortable knickers on occasion.

Tammy Lynne Stoner Fiction Editor & Vice President	Tammy is the writer/creator of "Dottie's Magic Pockets" – a kids’ show for modern families that has played at a dozen international film festivals and is now available in 100+ libraries. She’s worked at The Advocate, OUT magazine, and Alyson Books, and now teaches and freelances. In 2012, Tammy was nominated for a Million Writers Award, offered an SLS Summer Seminar fellowship, and had a painting chosen for the cover of the New England Review – but the highlight was finding out her partner is having twins! \| TammyLynneStoner.com As the Fiction Editor for Gertrude Press, Tammy is looking for smart, unique, strong pieces with a memorable voice and a beginning, middle, and end. She is interested in work across all genres, notably literary and lit-sci-fi (ala Gibson), under 3,000 words from new and established writers. Submit!

J. M. Jansen Art Editor	After living a rather nomadic life, J.M. Jansen is pleased to have landed in Portland, OR. She is excited to be the new Visual Arts Editor for Gertrude Press. J.M. is a multimedia artist whose work has been shown both nationally and internationally. In 2009 her work was selected for the UAMO Contemporary Arts Festival in Munich, Germany, and in 2010 she was part of a group show at Laguanacazul Gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2011 her work was chosen for the Spaceworks project in Tacoma, WA. She holds a BFA from University of Dayton and an MAAE from Art Academy of Cincinnati. J.M.’s artwork encompasses concepts of displacement, temporality, and place. She is influenced by elements of her everyday landscape, combined with reconfigurations of memories.


Allison Tobey Poetry Editor	Allison Tobey is a survivor of Cleveland, Ohio, and has received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She now teaches writing at Chemeketa Community College in Portland, Oregon, as well as Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in many national reviews including Rhino, Concho River Review, Pedestal Magazine, Cloudbank, Sugar Hill Review, and Paper Nautilus. If you are attempting to decipher what type of poetry Ms. Tobey is drawn to, know that she enjoys poetry of all kinds, but counts as her favorite poets the likes of Terrance Hayes, Mark Doty, Dorianne Laux, Peter Sears, Carol Potter, Sylvia Plath, Matthea Harvey, Tony Hoagland, Anne Carson, Harryette Mullen, and Patricia Smith.

Kelly Arthur Treasurer	Kelly received national recognition for her poetry at the age of 8, at which point she ceased writing anything of consequence. She loves words and the brilliant ways in which people string them together; she hates inconsistency and the misuse of apostrophes. Kelly holds a BA in English from Willamette University and an MA in Higher Education from the University of Arizona, but wonders if she missed her calling as a mathmetician. Perhaps her greatest professional achievement to date is having created a monstrous spreadsheet organizing thousands of lines of data that was dubbed "beautiful" by a computer programmer. She gets paid to work as a technical writer / instructional designer for a nameless, faceless corporate entity, and so is happy to contribute her head for numbers and her mad organizational skills to such a worthy endeavor as Gertrude Press.

Elizabeth Simson Durant	Elizabeth Simson Durant is the author of Sea Change (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Her poetry has appeared in over two dozen literary journals and anthologies, including Atlanta Review, Versal, Kalliope, Comstock Review, BorderSenses and Earth’s Daughters. Liz has been a poetry slam judge, newsletter editor and contestjudge for the Oregon State Poetry Association, and resident at Soapstone: A Writing Retreat for Women. Elizabeth holds a BA from Willamette University and is currently finishing her Master of Divinity degree at Marylhurst University. Liz is a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar’s Award winner and a volunteer writing workshop facilitator for Write Around Portland. Her web site is www.poemfish.com.

Justus Ballard Design & Layout	Justus Ballard lives in Portland, OR. He teaches composition, creative writing, and literature at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. In 2004, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University; later that year, he received the Friends of Lake Oswego Library William Stafford Fellowship from Oregon's Literary Arts for a novel in progress. His long short story "The Cubist Infant" was published in March 2005, by Cloverfield Press. In 2006, he was awarded the Lisa S. Ede TYCA-Pacific Northwest Outstanding Teacher Award, Adjunct Category (TYCA is the Two Year College Association of the National Council of Teachers of English). He does design and layout for Gertrude Press, as well as freelance design work for the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, a Portland-based non-profit that focuses on issues of mental health in the community. He is currently working on a novel, several short stories, and a rock opera.

Siobhan Crosby	Siobhan Crosby hails from Philadelphia, PA with a stint in our nation's capital while earning her BA in Liberal Arts at The George Washington University with a minor in Creative Writing. She loves Portland for the creative energy of its people, fantastic food and drink culture, dry summers, and the Hood strawberries. She works as an online marketing specialist for a music publisher and is full-time mom to Little Miss V. She brings a big Rolodex, a special schmoo-zheh-sais-quoi and a fondness for spreadsheets to the Gertrude Board.

Steven Rydman	Steven Rydman resides in the Metropolitan Detroit area of Michigan and Key West, Florida. He holds a B.S. Degree (Suma Cum Laude) from Wayne State University in Secondary Education English and Math. For three years, he worked for the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project, traveling the state of Michigan and beyond doing fundraising, safer sex workshops and gay/lesbian sensitivity trainings. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Rattle, Connecticut River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Bloom, Bellingham Review, Chiron Review, The Los Angeles Review and StoryQuarterly. He received one Commendation and two Honorable Mentions in the 2001, 2003, and 2004 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, plus Third Place in both the Detroit Writer's Voice 2003 Contest judged by X.J. Kennedy and in the 2003 Oscar Wilde Poetry Awards from Gival Press. His piece "Vacuum" was picked by Robert Olen Butler as the 2006 World's Best Short Short Story in The Southeast Review. He published his first chapbook of poetry, My Town, in the summer of 2003. He recently wrote a review of Tom Ford's film A Single Man for Lambda Literary.

Eric K. Delehoy Founding Editor	Eric Delehoy is the founding editor of Gertrude Press. His essays, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in a number of journals such as instant city, The Rockford Review, Onthebus, Coal City Review, Upstairs at Duroc, Seedhouse, Weird Sisters, and Cranial Tempest, among others. His short story, "Bus People," received the Rockford Review's Editors' Choice Award. Eric earned his Master in Fine Arts (Fiction) from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2004. He has served in numerous positions in LGBTQA organizations including Executive Director, and later Board of Directors President of the Lambda Community Center, a non-profit educational and social support organization serving the queer communities of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming.