Mission Statement

Shaking like a Mountain is an online literary magazine publishing thoughtful prose and poetry in response to the soundtrack of our lives. If music and literature both have the ability to transcend the physical, stir the soul and leave us quivering in our boots, then the literature of song has the power to shatter the solid earth and cause the mountains to shake. We believe everybody has a song, or songs, that speak to them in ways particular and wondrous. Shaking like a Mountain is an attempt to bring together these two art forms. We would like to see literature that has been influenced and inspired by any song drawn from the deep reservoir of popular music-all shades of rock, country, folk, blues, reggae, jazz, international and the soul/funk/hip hop axis.

Your editors,

Wayne Cresser
Vito Grippi

Editorial Staff

Wayne Cresser

Vito Grippi

Dr. Jed Griswold, image consultant

John Hames, photog-at-large
John Hames is an internationally known photographer whose work has appeared in magazines in the US and China. Visit his website at www.johnhames.com for more information and work samples.

Contributing Editors

Amity Bitzel – Amity R. Bitzel is an MFA candidate at the University of Baltimore. By day, she writes for a marketing company specializing in eBay sales for non-profits; she also freelances about culture and entertainment for a Pennsylvania newspaper. By night, she has perfected a cycle of slacking for weeks, then vomiting out short stories overnight. Hey, nobody said it was healthy.

Janice Eidus - Janice Eidus’s new novel is The Last Jewish Virgin. Two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, she’s published five other books, including the novel, The War of the Rosens, and the story collection, The Celibacy Club. Her work appears in such leading journals as The New York Times, Jewish Currents, and Lilith. She’s co-editor of It’s Only Rock and Roll: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Short Stories. Her rock and roll writing includes the widely-published, award-winning short stories, “Vito Loves Geraldine,” “Not The Plaster Casters,” and “Elvis, Axl, and Me.” She teaches Fiction Writing and Creative Nonfiction Writing for the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Carlow University and is also a private writing coach. She divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Rob Lawson - R. A. Lawson (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 2003) is a historian of American culture whose current writing projects include a book on blues history, JIM CROW’S COUNTERCULTURE: THE BLUES AND AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 1890-1945 (forthcoming from LSU Press), as well as a local history of Dean College. His retrospective on the field of blues scholarship, “The Blues’ First Century: One Hundred years of Hearing and Interpreting the Music and Musicians,” will appear soon in the journal, Southern Cultures. He is Assistant Professor of History at Dean College (Franklin, MA) and Visiting Assistant Professor of Graduate Studies at Trinity College (Hartford, CT).

Christa Mastrangelo – Christa Mastrangelo used to be a wandering gypsy, traveling to the beat of her own jazz drummer, until her husband and baby daughter wrangled her into living in West Virginia, where they own a little bistro. Now, she uses her MFA degree to describe wine to wayward diners and the sky to her little girl. She taught college writing and literature in her old, crazy life. Her work can be found in Bohemian Bridge, Sans Merci, Click, Arsenic Lobster, The Florida English Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Blue Ridge.

Marion Winik - Marion Winik has been a commentator on All Things Considered since 1991. She is the author of five books of creative nonfiction: TELLING, FIRST COMES LOVE, THE LUNCHBOX CHRONICLES, RULES FOR THE UNRULY, and ABOVE US ONLY SKY. She’s also written two books of poetry and a bunch of magazine articles and book reviews. She currently teaches writing at Carlow University and York College of Pennsylvania. She lives in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania. (www.marionwinik.com)