Poetica Magazine
Reflections of Jewish Thought
The Editors
Michal Mahgerefteh, Publisher & Poetry Editor
Pete Freas, Short Story Editor
Jane Ellen Glasser, Annual Poetry Contest Judge
Ricky Rapoport Friesem, Visiting Editor
Michelle Langenberg, Visiting Editor
Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Visiting Editor
Linda Pressman, Blog Editor
I thank each and one of you
for volunteering your time and talent.
Poetica Magazine is successful thanks
to your commitment to Jewish literature.
Michal Mahgerefteh
Michal Mahgerefteh, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Photo by Ben Mahgerefteh, January 2009
Michal Mahgerefteh is an award-winning artist and poet, born in Israel and has lived in Virginia since 1986. Poetica was created by Michal as a final exam during her third creative writing course with Robert P. Arthur. Michal's poetry has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies including Women in Judaism Contemporary Writings, The Jew Blue Yorker, The Poetry Society of Pennsylvania, The Poetry Society of Texas, Voices Israel Anthology. Michal is an active member of The Poetry Society of Virginia, a sponsor of two annual contests. Michal's art has been exhibited in galleries and art centers located in New York, New Orleans and Virginia. Michal is currently working on her B.A. in English - Minor in Creative Writing, and a B.A. in Studio Arts. www.michalmahgerefteh.com
Michal's debut poetry collection, In My Bustan, is now in print.
Currently Michal is working on her second collection, The Crimson Thread, a collection of poetry and drawings (February 2010), and on a collaboration project with the Canadian artists, Lilian Broca, a collection of poetry and drawings (June 2010).
Pete Freas, Short Story Editor
Pete Freas is a Chesapeake poet and publisher. He maintains a poetry events website (www.chesbaypoets.org)
Jane Ellen Glasser, Poetry Annual Contest Judge
Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review and Poetry Northwest. Her poems have garnered numerous awards from the Irene Leache Society, Puddingstone, and the Poetry Society of Virginia, and she has been recognized for outstanding articles on teaching poetry that were featured in Virginia English Bulletin and English Journal. In the past she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of her poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005, and her award-winning book, Light Persists, published by Tampa University Press in April 2006, received an honorable mention in the 2007 Library of Virginia Literary Awards.
Ricky Rapoport Friesem, Visiting Editor
Ricky Rapoport Friesem was born in Calgary, Canada and grew up in Toronto, Canada. Her father was a writer and literary critic for the Yiddish press, and her mother a teacher of Yiddish. Yiddish was Ricky’s first language. As a teenager, she was active in the local branch of Hechalutz Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. In 1956 she moved to Ann Arbor Michigan where she completed a B.A. in Sociology and Journalism, and an M.A in Library Science. She wrote her first poem as a child on the day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and she has been writing poetry, on and off, ever since. Prior to moving to Israel in 1972, she worked as a freelance journalist, a children’s librarian, and the director of a Jewish School. In 1972, she moved to Israel with her husband and three sons. For the next 25 years she worked as a journalist, editor, and award-winning documentary film maker for the Weizmann Institute of Science, whose Communications Department she headed for over a decade. She has written two cook books: Fruits of the Earth (Adama Books, 1985) and Joy of Israel (Steimatzky, 1976). She was awarded the First Prize in Writer’s Digest 2007 International Self-Published Book Awards for her collection of poetry, entitled, Parentheses. Her poetry has appeared in Moment, Ariga, Lucidity, Poetica, the 2007 Voices Israel Anthology and Poetry Canada. She received Honorable Mentions in the 2005 and 2006 Poetica Magazine Annual Poetry Contest, in Lilith Magazine’s 2007 Charlotte Newberger Poetry Competition, and in the 2007 Reuben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. She was awarded the 2nd prize in Palabras Press’ Dancing with Words contest. A collection of her poetry, entitled My Intifada, was published in the Pudding House Publications Chapbook Series for 2006. She is married to a physicist and has 3 sons and 12 grandchildren. www.rickyfriesem.com
Linda Pressman - Blog Editor
Linda Pressman is a freelance writer who is one of seven sisters born to Holocaust Survivor parents in Chicago. She is the author of Father of Sons, a poem which won the Best Published Award in Poetica Magazine in March, 2008. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Znine, the Literary Journal of the University of Texas at Arlington, the Paradise Review, the Maricopa Anthology, and in Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers. She has also written for the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. In addition to this, she is working on a memoir. She has an undergraduate degree in History, did post-graduate work in Medieval History, has a Master’s in English, and has taught college as an English faculty adjunct. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband and two children. She also has a personal blog, Bar Mitzvahzilla, http://barmitzvahzilla.blogspot.com.
Michelle Langenberg, Visiting Editor/Holocaust Anthology
Michelle Langenberg is a poet, artist, freelance editor, and energy healer. Langenberg has won awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets and the Scottish Open Poetry Competition. Credits include more than 100 works of art, poetry, prose, and songs published in Sparrow, The Formalist, Southern Humanities Review, Black Bear Review, and Exposure Art, among others. Michelle has formatted and edited a screenplay that sold in Hollywood for $850,000, edited a manuscript of nationally known poet, David Ray, Co-editor of Potpourri Literary Quarterly and Gateway, served as Kansas Authors Club Poetry and Art Contest Judge, and a guest Lecturer for the Kansas State Poetry Society. Michelle is the author of Great Beginnings: Two-hundred First Lines to Give Writers a Running Start, Portraits of a Poet, The Painted Bible, and You Won't Always Be Little, Tad.
www.langefinearts.com
