Our Stable of Authors

Carl Nelson has had poems nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize.  Grinding his ax writing essays seems to keep him from ruining his poetry.   His poems, stories, and essays have been published in such journals as the New English Review,  Poetry Salzburg Review, Orbis, Atlanta Review,  and the Lake.
He spent twenty years in the Seattle theater community, during which time he wrote and produced plays, directed others, and performed whenever the talent was missing but a body still needed.  Before that, he did stand-up comedy.

Now he lives in Belpre, Ohio, where he moseys about and is the publisher and managing editor of Magic Bean Books.

After high school, Marty Jamison did his hitch in the U.S. Navy and then put himself through college on the GI Bill. With a bachelor’s in history and a master’s in library science, he rambled through a 30-year career as an academic librarian. Now retired with his wife in Marietta, Ohio, he writes outrageous poems and stories as time allows, while also wearing a large floppy full-time caregiver hat. When a reporter from The Beastly Bleatasked him how he finds the time to write, he responded, “The best way to get things done is to do them.” And to the MiddleWest Chatter’s query why he writes in such a forthright, not to say jarring fashion, he replied, “Why not?” He has a weakness for coffee and chocolate. He uses bad words, albeit in a literary manner. His outlook on all things is Keep it simple.

Eldon Cene died in Lompoc prison in 2012 after writing 31 unpublished novels.  (The last of which, a science fiction resembling memoir, The Mind Wars / a Trilogy, is featured here.)

Eldon often said that incarceration was “the best thing that ever happened to me.  I got three squares and all the privacy any man could afford.  I could never actually kick being a criminal.  I’d thought it was just my true nature until I got in here and realized that all I really wanted to do was to write and make up shit.  After that, I was through with stealing.”

He is currently buried in a potter’s graveyard just outside the prison walls.  “It’s the only way some of us are ever getting out of here,” he remarked.

 He was born Sheldon Garvey in Pine Rock, Texas.  But adopted Eldon Cene as his pen name, “’cause it sounded better,” he said, “and like any good second-story man, I was (s)eldom seen”.  The authors rights are controlled by Magic Bean Books.

Nell Hufford  is a poet of quiet evocation and simple, bare emotion. Nell was born and raised in a small town in South East Ohio. She spent most of her younger years roaming the woods alone and falling in love with nature. Her father worked in a factory and later started his own business.  Her mother stayed home and did what most women did in the '40s and '50s.  Nell grew up poor but didn't know that.  She loved to listen to poetry because her Maternal Grandmother read it to her all the time.  One of her prized possessions is an old book of Longfellow"s poems published in 1830 which was her grandmother's. Nell currently loves her Sacred Way poet friends, enjoys the weekly readings and all the help they offer. This is her first published poetry collection with Magic Bean Books. 

 Besides writing poetry, Christopher Friend, also known as the “Weekly Shaman”, authors a column for his local paper.  His artwork has appeared in various magazines and in his spare time (between a regular job and writing) he teaches art at a nursing home. 

Our author was a  submarine officer's wife.  When her husband sailed to sea for long periods, our author/mother-of-four kept a log of her end of that life in poetry form.  Forty years later Magic Bean Books is happy to highlight Fredretta's Key West years.

 An author is also a researcher, bike racer, marathon runner, downhill skier, sometime triathlete, lover of life, and adrenalin.​   Mr. Burgess' books are offered here through an agreement with Zon Publishing.