Voices Amidst the Virus

Eileen Cleary (she/her) is the author of Wild Pack of the Living (Nixes Mate, 2024), 2 a.m. with Keats (Nixes Mate, 2021) and Child Ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus' which was the featured text at the 2021 MSU Filmetry Festival. Cleary founded and edits the Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books, and curates the Lily Poetry Salon. A multi-pushcart nominee, her work is published widely in journals and anthologies.

Christine Jones grew up in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. Like many young women during those times, she failed to prepare a plan for her life. It was this failure that led to her being a single mother living on welfare. Had it not been for the fact that she wanted a better life, she might have allowed herself to believe her situation could not get better. She would have taken that lethal step into what she terms as being the 'Ghetto's Poison' - a poison that allows one to foolishly believe the hype that says, "Where and how you live will define where you will go in life." Instead, she strived forward, while helplessly watching many of her friends as they took that frightful plunge into the Ghetto's Poison. As she watched, a fire burned deep into her soul. It was that fire that prompted her to write novels, Ghetto's Poison and My Sister's Place.