Indy Zoeller from Orcas Island and Nancy Bingham of Lopez Island are among the writers and artists featured in SHARK REEF Literary Magazine’s Winter 2013 edition, online now at sharkreef.org.

Founded in 2001 as a venue for Lopez Island writers, SHARK REEF is now in its second decade and accepting work from artists wherever the Internet reaches.

Submissions to the current issue came from the U.S., Canada, European and Central American countries and Asia.

In the introduction to the Winter 2013 issue, Jeremiah O’Hagan, co-editor for prose, points to the edition’s stories of escape and returning, looking for meaning and bearing witness.

Some pieces, O’Hagan writes, “confront, slantwise, the disassembly and reassembly that necessarily takes place when we try to make sense of the world.”

Editor and Co-founder Lorna Reese partners with a different co-editor for each issue while two poets choose from among poetry submissions. O’Hagan is a staff reporter for a small-town weekly newspaper in Washington state and recently received a master’s in fine arts from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. He has been published in several literary magazines and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Australia’s Cordite Poetry Review and SHARK REEF.

Poetry co-editors for the issue were Tom Aslin and Gary Thompson. A Northwest native, Aslin holds a master’s in fine arts. from the University of Montana where he studied with the late Richard Hugo. His full-length collection,  “A Moon over Wings,” was a finalist for the 2009 Washington State Book Award in poetry.

San Juan Islander Gary Thompson also holds a master’s in fine arts from the University of Montana and he later taught in the creative writing program at California State University for over twenty-five years. His latest book of poems joins three previous collections.

Of the ten poems selected by Aslin and Thompson, O’Hagan writes: “All the things we find in prose hold true of poetry… It’s a truth condensed, made essential or blown up. It’s an escape from the limits of everyday language to a place where words speak at the same time they cry and dance and harmonize.”

Featured artist in the issue, Nancy Bingham is a life-long professional potter though, recently, she longed for the simplicity and excitement she’d experienced when starting out.

She spent a month in the desert, determined to make a pot with only what she could find on the land. The result, featured in SHARK REEF, is a simply beautiful pot created by hand and fired in a barrel of sawdust.

Bingham’s painting in the same issue displays the energy of the “bright strong wild color feeling” of Guatemala where she spends winters. Judith Connor, St. Paul, Minn., is art editor for the magazine.

“The work featured in this thirteenth year of our magazine’s existence,” says Reese, “is testimony to the many serious writers and readers ‘out there’ — not only in the United States but all over the world — who continue to support us by submitting and by turning to our virtual pages to see what others have done.”

Readers are encouraged to subscribe for free on the SHARK REEF site (sharkreef.org) to receive email announcements about new issues and to like the magazine on Facebook (Shark Reef Literary Magazine).

SHARK REEF publishes two issues a year, one in the summer and one in winter, with submission deadlines of March 31 and September 30, respectively. The literary magazine considers fiction, non-fiction prose, poetry and dramatic writing. It also features artwork by visual artists in each issue. Go to sharkreef.org for submission guidelines, current offerings and archived issues.