For general inquiries contact: editor@alimentumjournal.com

Alimentum
PO Box 210028
Nashville, TN 37221

OUR STAFF

Paulette Licitra, Publisher/Editor-in-chief, is a writer and chef, and teaches writing workshops and Italian cooking classes (Cucina Paradiso). She’s written for several publications including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Nashville Arts, Her magazine, Urban Desires, and others. Paulette published the cult poetry journal poemail®. She also writes for museums, theatre, and television. She completed her professional culinary studies at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) in NYC, and has traveled extensively in Europe for culinary research. She leads culinary tours to Italy and Eat & Greet Tours in NY and Nashville. Apart from food and writing, Paulette loves songwriting and performing with Duane Spencer in the band Duette.

Photo by Charles E. Manley

Peter Selgin, Fiction & Nonfiction Editor, is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, Life Goes to the Movies, a novel, two books on the craft of fiction, and two children’s books. His stories and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies, including Glimmer Train Stories, Poets & Writers, The Sun, Slate, Colorado Review, Writers and Their Notebooks, Writing Fiction, and Best American Essays 2009. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man: An Artist’s Memoir, was published by the University of Iowa Press and is a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize for Writing. His novel, The Water Master, won the Pirate’s Alley/Faulkner Society Prize, and his essay, The Kuhreihen Melody, won the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Selgin’s visual art has graced the pages of the The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Gourmet, and other publications. Selgin has had several plays published and produced, including Night Blooming Serious, which won the Mill Mountain Theater Competition. His full-length play, A God in the House, based on Dr. Kevorkian and his suicide device, was a National Playwright’s Conference Winner and later optioned for Off-Broadway. He teaches at Antioch University’s MFA writing program and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia College. His website is at www.peterselgin.com.

Cortney Davis, Poetry Editor. Cortney's third poetry collection, Leopold's Maneuvers (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), won the Prairie Schooner 2003 Book Prize. Her other collections include Details of Flesh (CALYX Books, 1997), and The Body Flute (Adastra Press, 1994). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Massachusetts Review, The Sun, Witness, Crazyhorse, Ms. Magazine, Ontario Review, Hudson Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Poetry East, and other publications. She's been awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship and three Connecticut Commission on the Arts poetry grants. I Knew a Woman: Four Women Patients and their Female Caregiver (Random House, 2001) won the Connecticut Center for the Book Non-Fiction Award in 2002. Her book The Heart's Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing was published in January 2009 by Kent State University Press. Cortney's website. Hear Cortney read several of her poems here.

Duane Spencer, Music Editor, started playing music at the age of 3, when his grandfather Ward Duane taught him the ukulele. At age 10 he began playing drums, and at 17 played behind Van Morrison during his “Brown-Eyed Girl” era. Duane sings with an instinctive knack for harmony, and the ability to hit falsetto notes that can shatter glass. He was a member of the legendary Martha's Vineyard acoustic band Mr. Timothy Charles Duane (aka TCD), and the soul-calypso (soca) group Target Rhythm Band. He has played, recorded, and collaborated with Van Morrison, Fred Lipsius, Roly Salley, Richard Bell, Clark Pierson, John Hall, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Kate Taylor, Maria Muldaur, Bobby Cochran, and Mark Volman. Duane’s music catalog has been featured on compilation releases, documentaries, and promotional presentations. He co-wrote the lullaby "Jason & Ida" with Columbia artist Kate Taylor (featuring James Taylor on guitar and vocals, Carly Simon on vocals, Will Lee on bass, and Don Grolnick on piano) for her 2^nd album titled "Kate Taylor.” Duane now lives in Nashville, holding the distinction of being the only Cocktail Kit drummer in Music City. His ultimate passion lies in the music he shares with Paulette Licitra, writing, recording, and performing together as Duette.  Visit his website at www.DuaneSpencer.com.

Claudia Carlson, Print Art Director, loves to work with words and images, type and graphics. Her first book of poetry, The Elephant House, was published by Marsh Hawk Press in 2007. She co-edited, with Jeanne Marie Beaumont, The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, an anthology of modern fairy tale poems. Court Green, Heliotrope, and Southern Poetry Review, among others, have published her poems. The Same, The Cream City Review, and Gargoyle have featured her photos. Her design with Peter Selgin for Alimentum: The Literature of Food won a best in category award for General Trade Quality Paperback design at the 2008 and 2009 New York Book Shows. She works as a graphic designer and illustrator and lives in Manhattan with her husband, lyricist Jim Racheff. Claudia's website; Claudia's blog

Esther Cohen, Menupoems Editor, loves food and words. Someone is often eating in all that she writes (novels, poems, stories, essays). In restaurants, she wishes that menu words were different. If only poets wrote menus, there would be no more cold crispy salads. Food and all the words that food deserves, all the surprise and the texture, fragile, unforgettable and sometimes even deep bright green, would be part of each menu if poets were in charge. She teaches writing at Manhattanville College and is the author of five published books, most recently, a poetry collection, God is a Tree. Esther's website

Eric LeMay, Web and Book Review Editor, and Ruth Polleys, Assistant Web and Book Review Editor, have worked together through many cocktail hours. Eric teaches creative writing at Ohio University. His poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, The Nation, Poetry Daily, Gastronomica, and the anthologies Best Food Writing 2009 and 2011. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The One in the Many, and Immortal Milk: Adventures in Cheese. Ruth works for the Office for the Arts at Harvard and has served as proofreader/copy editor for several published works, ongoing projects and websites. Her work has appeared in Charles River Review, specs, and Six Word Stories. She is a recent graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program. Visit Eric's website at www.ericlemay.org.