Gekker Publishing
-Where literature matters
Meet Our Authors & Artists
Fall 2023
Renee Adams
Artist
As an outdoor enthusiast and beanbag botanist, Renee finds immediate inspiration in the flora surrounding her home in central Washington State. She is active in the regional arts scene both as a curator and founding member of PUNCH Projects, a rural art collective dedicated to the promotion of visual dialogue between urban and rural art communities.
When not in her studio or working as a gallery manager at a local nonprofit arts center, Renee enjoys cultivating an edible and native plant garden, hunting for mushrooms, and exploring the wilds.
Quentin Ragan
Artist
Quentin Ragan provided Gekker Quarterly's summer edition with sectional artwork, in the form of ink painting and sculpture. As a poet, stone carver, and painter, Quentin takes inspiration from many different faucets. In all his creative endeavors, he learns through trial and error, which has lead Quentin to the view that everything has potential to be assembled or modified to display unique aesthetic choice.
Stephen Schulz
Author- Fiction
Stephen Schulz has been selected to contribute a series of short stories with Gekker Quarterly, to be released between Spring 2023 and Spring 2024. His work, Restless Crows, examines the dismantling of the nuclear family in contemporary middle class America.
Tim Donahue
Author- Fiction
Tim Donahue is a twenty-one year old undergraduate at Western Washington University. As a Creative Writing Major, Donahue has had a multitude of short-stories and poems published by literary magazines and anthologies. His debut novel ‘The James Gang’ released on June 2nd, 2023 through Central Park South Publishing.
Jampa Dorje
Essayist
Jampa Dorje, aka Richard Denner, was a Berkeley street poet in the 1960s. Living in a wilderness cabin in Alaska, he began printing chapbooks; there are now over 400 titles. Working cowboy on a cattle ranch, tree planter on the slopes of Mount Saint Helens, longtime proprietor of Four Winds Bookstore & Café in Ellensburg, Washington, Jampa completed a traditional solitary, three-year retreat in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. This poet-printer-yogi now reads philosophy at CWU.
He is Ellensburg's 2022 Art Treasure.
Sarita Dasgupta
Author- Fiction
Sarita Dasgupta is a writer, editor, poet and playwright. Before coming to USA, Sarita lived in the state of Assam (India) amidst acres of green tea bushes, where she developed a deep and abiding love and respect for Nature and the many wild creatures she encountered. Her published works - Feathered Friends - a collection of fables for children - has birds as characters; and the Rainbow Reader series of English Literature and Language textbooks for Grades 1 to 4, contain original stories, poems and essays promoting gender equality; respect for animals and Nature; and responsibility towards preserving one’s heritage and the environment. Her original musicals for children focus on delivering relevant messages through entertainment.
kAmA
Poet
Kama, full name Katherine Maria Camarata (she/they), was born and resides in Ellensburg, WA. She is a circus performer with a focus on hoops, poi and fire, a journalist, vocalist, CWU student in psychology/philosophy and former Lead Editor of the CWU weekly newspaper, The Observer. They helped create the Headlight Children performance project, volunteer for local nonprofit Northwest Expressive Arts Response (NEAR) and organize community events centered around poetry, song and motion.
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J. Finnick Johnson
Poet
J. Finnick Johnson is a recent graduate from Western Washington University earning their BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing along with a minor in Psychology. Their work has been published in WWU’s Jeopardy Magazine. They enjoy hosting game nights with friends and spending time with their loved ones.
David Asia
Author- Fiction
David Asia is a retired mental health/substance abuse professional and school counselor. He lives on a small farm in North Central Washington State with his wife, 17 chickens, his dog, the neighbors’ flock of sheep, and, off and on, a couple of pigs. His work includes a self-published book of poetry entitled “Conjugating The Verb To Be: The Poetry of Time and Place”, with other work published in The New English Review, Poetica Magazine, Northwest Mirror, War Crimes Times, and Methow Grist (he also boasts an admirable collection of rejection notices, many now in digital form).
Rob Schnelle
Poet
Rob Schnelle is the author of Valley Walking: Notes on the Land (WA State UP, 1997). His work has also been published in the Seattle Review, the Bellevue Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Word River, Weber Studies, Writing on the Edge, Bird Watcher’s Digest, and the Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal. A native of Massachusetts, Rob has lived for over thirty years in Washington’s Kittitas Valley. Poetry, he feels, aims to do what language can’t do until it does.
Bailey Day
Author- Fiction
Bailey Day began writing stories after she was insulted by a peer in 4th Grade, who told her she was only able to write “girly” stuff. As if a gauntlet had been thrown, that very same day she started writing about monsters, demons, and aliens. Her first novel, a young adult horror titled THE AMAZING IMAGINATION MACHINE, was published December 4th, 2018. In 2020, she won first place in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s annual contest in the Short Story category with my piece, “H.O.U.S.E,” which was later published in Suspense Magazine.