BETTY AUTHORS
Meet the authors of Betty’s exciting inaugural titles
Leah Browning is the author of Two Good Ears and Loud Snow, mini-books of flash fiction (Silent Station Press), and When the Sun Comes Out After Three Days of Rain, a collection of poetry (Kelsay Books). She is also the author of three short nonfiction books and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Her work has previously appeared in Harpur Palate, Four Way Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Threepenny Review, Necessary Fiction, Watershed Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Newfound, The Forge Literary Magazine, Superstition Review, South 85 Journal, Terrain,The Ilanot Review, The Westchester Review, and many more. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in anthologies including The Doll Collection from Terrapin Books and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence from White Pine Press. Leah Browning has served as editor of the Apple Valley Review since 2005. Betty will publish her story collection THE COSTUME WEDDING.
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Joanna Choi Kalbus was born in North Korea. She made two critical migrations—first from North Korea to South Korea after the Communist takeover, and then to the United States as a ten-year-old immigrant during the Korean War before settling and coming of age in Los Angeles, California. She earned her B.S. in Elementary Education at UCLA and received her Ph.D. in Educational Administration from the University of California, Riverside. She served as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent / regional superintendent of the San Bernardino School District for thirty-five years. She was also involved in community efforts to address the pressing issues of abused and neglected children, homelessness, and gangs. Now retired, Joanna lives in the Bay Area where she can view her favorite bridge, the Golden Gate, that she and her mother sailed under in 1951.
Betty will publish her memoir THE BOAT NOT TAKEN in the spring of 2025.
photo: Katherine Briccetti
Janis Hubschman’s stories have appeared in Chautauqua Journal, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Green Mountains Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Southern Humanities Review, StoryQuarterly, West Branch, and elsewhere. She was awarded Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award and first place in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open contest. Her work has been supported with a Rona Jaffe-Bread Loaf Fiction Scholarship and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has served on the Bread Loaf Admissions Board and teaches fiction writing at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
Her collection of stories TAKE ME WITH YOU NEXT TIME is the first-ever title to be published by Betty on October 15, 2024.
Leah De Forest was born in Geelong, Australia, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Ohio University’s Quarter After Eight (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), Bodega Magazine (also Pushcart-nominated), LEON Literary Review, Monash University’s Verge 2020, Fiction Writers Review, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Eureka Street, and The Canberra Times. Her work has been long-listed for the 2015 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and highly commended in the 2013 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. A former ward of the State, Leah has worked as a news reporter, feature writer, columnist and sub-editor at The Canberra Times, speechwriter and media advisor to a Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, and strategic advisor to the Deputy Secretary, Police and Corrections at the Victorian Department of Justice. Leah teaches fiction in the graduate program at Harvard Extension School, is an editor at Bloom (a literary site featuring authors who debut at 40 or older), was a contributor in fiction at the 2022 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and holds an MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Betty will publish her novel ANY KIND OF KNOWN TOMORROW.
Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Ilze Duarte has lived in the United States for over thirty years. Ilze Duarte translates fiction by contemporary Brazilian authors from the original Portuguese to English. Her translations of short stories by João Anzanello Carrascoza and Marilia Arnaud appear in literary magazines in the US and UK, including MAYDAY Magazine, Asymptote Journal, Exchanges Journal, and several others. She is a recipient of the Sundial House 2024 Literary Translation Award, which includes the upcoming publication of her translation of Marilia Arnaud's short story collection The Book of Affects. In her original work, Ilze writes short prose, especially flash. Her stories have been published in Thanatos Review, FlashFlood, Dear Damsels, Please See Me, and New Plains Review. Ilze has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature and a graduate-level degree in English/Portuguese Translation from Universidade de São Paulo. She also holds a master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and a PhD degree in Speech Communication from Pennsylvania State University. Ilze lives with her husband and two daughters in Milpitas, California. Betty will publish her collection THE HEART BEATS FASTER.
Magdalena Bartkowska was born in Gdańsk, Poland, and raised in western Massachusetts, where she still lives with her family. She holds a Master’s degree in education and has formerly taught third grade, as well as an English language class for immigrants. Magda’s writing has appeared in The Tishman Review, Journal of Expressive Writing, Barnstorm Journal, Apple Valley Review, Vast Chasm Magazine, and Manifest Station, while an essay she wrote about motherhood shortlisted in the Sonora Review Rage Essay Contest. Magda was also a runner-up in the winter 2020 Wow! Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Contest. In addition to speaking on a podcast, radio show, and panel, Magda presented at the world’s first ever virtual Polish festival, and she was recently invited to participate in a documentary portrait project exploring immigrant narratives. Betty will publish her memoir-in-essays THIS PLACE WHERE YOU ARE.
Marianne Villanueva has written three story collections: Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx), Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press), and The Lost Language (Manila: Anvil Press). She also co-edited, with poet Virginia Cerenio, a groundbreaking Filipino women's anthology, Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx). Her novella, Jenalyn (Vagabondage Press) was a finalist for the UK's Saboteur Award. Her fourth story collection, Residents of the Deep: Stories, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press.
Betty will publish her collection of stories THE LAST AMERICAN GOVERNOR.
