Gekker Publishing
Where Literature Matters
Meet our Authors & Artists
The Gekker Collection
Authors of fiction, poetry, & essay
& contributing artists
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.
David Asia
Poet, 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).
Anna Baldwin
Fiction
Anna Baldwin is a pretty regular human being who was born and raised in Ellensburg, Washington. Much of her work is characterized by a childlike, whimsical style, and she is inspired by elements of nature, spirituality, and philosophy. She has explored many different forms of art, including poetry, painting, drawing, fiction and nonfiction prose, and music. She views art simply as a meaningful way to pass time in this life, and it sure does keep her busy.
Clayton Bohnet
Artist, Poet
Clayton Bohnet has been seeking poetry through many life stages and has self-published some zines, collections of poetry, and some of his own works. He has participated in one somewhat sustained collaborative art group and has exhibited some of his own works, such as the collage presented here. He is some child of the battle of Seattle and the camps of Zuccotti. His philosophical montage on the nature of protest was published by in 2020 by Lexington Books. His favorite pastime is telling people why he wants to interview them. He has worked as a teacher and now studies law.
Sarita Dasgupta
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.
Bailey Day
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.
Tim Donahue
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
Poet, 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.
Cory Eberhart
Poet
Cory Eberhart was second born in a family of nine and grew up in Kittitas County, Washington. She earned both BA and BEd from Central Washington University, as well as her MFA from University of Oregon. She has been a teacher in public schools and community non-profit volunteer. She writes with an observing eye and the goal of creating an infusion of grace and beauty melded to the acts of seeing, feeling, saying, sharing and comprehending.
Eva Elasigue
Fiction
Eva L. Elasigue writes novels in science fiction fantasy, as well as short stories, stage, articles, food, music, and humor. Her current main work is the space fantasy trilogy Bones of Starlight. She has also hosted her typewriter for first-person accounts, live stage and collaborative poetry, and love letters. As a writer she has toured internationally, and she has also presented as a visual artist in mixed media, a dance performer, and a mermaid. She has worked as a biological scientist, a clerk, and a farmhand, and is a wildcrafter who loves music and the great outdoors.
Cintia Garai
Filmmaker
Cintia is a Hungarian scientist and wildlife filmmaker. She completed her Masters of Science in Zoology in 2006 at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hungary, and gained a PhD degree in Primatology at Kyoto University in Japan. While her fieldwork focuses on the personality traits of wild-living bonobos, she continues to work in the DR Congo as a filmmaker and promoter of nature conservation.
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Louise Greer
Fiction
Louise Greer is a creative writing student at Western Washington University. She enjoys spending time in
nature, reading, and dance. The piece she contributed was inspired by a short time spent living in Stuttgart, Germany.
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.
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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Rachel Kotkin
Artist
Rachel Kotkin provided us with this issue's cover/sectional art and stand-up show in the This & That section, featuring her bizarre puppet creations and original wit. Her artistic focus is mixed media collage, comedy, and puppetry, as well as art education.
Please visit her website to learn more about this talented artist:
Quentin Ragan
Artist
Quentin Ragan has provided The Gekker Collection 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.
Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher
Artist
Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher provided us with this issue's cover art and colcha embroidery featured in the This & That section. She is a white and Northern Nuevo Mexicana Chicana, born and raised in Juneau, Alaska and now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, Canada. Phoebe makes colcha embroidery, which she studied under master colcha artist Julia Gomez in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wool colcha embroidery was developed in Northern New Mexico in the 16th century. Through colcha embroidery, she connects with a place-based traditional art form, specifically from her Northern New Mexican heritage. She hopes that by practicing colcha embroidery, she can play a small role in its continuation.
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.
Stephen Schulz
Fiction
Stephen Schulz has been selected to contribute a series of short stories to The Gekker Collection, which will subsequently be published together as a book. His anthology, Restless Crows, examines the dismantling of the nuclear family in contemporary middle class America.
Rock Swannioff
Essayist
Rock Swannioff is a long time essayist who has recently become a farmer in Upstate New York. His current work evaluates the futility of holding on to the aesthetics of harmony within the filth of a newly adopted agrarian lifestyle, and thereby puts into perspective post-modernity in the digital era.
Marco Undersong
Poet
Marco Undersong is a singer-songwriter and musician from Seattle.
He has been a member of the Northwest's goth music scene for nearly 30 years, beginning with his involvement in the band Black Atmosphere in the '90s.
Poetry has always been an integral part to his music composition, which he adopts as song lyrics. Overtime, however, Marco has written a number of poems that are best experienced in a literary context.
Now, for the first time, Marco is sharing this work.