Zoetrope: All-Story Extra

Cynthia Hartwig is a forty-eight-year-old refugee from advertising. She owned her own ad agency for fourteen years before selling it to a national advertising agency in 1997. Since then, she's been immersed in a full-time writing apprenticeship that has included workshops with Grace Paley, Michael Byers, and Arnost Lustig. Her publication credits include Zoetrope: All-Story (Vol. 3, Issue 1) and All-Story Extra, November 1999. She was a finalist in Inkwell Magazine's short fiction contest, Spring 2000, a finalist in Toyon's (Humboldt State College) Raymond Carver Short Fiction Contest Spring 2000, and received an Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest 2000 Writing Competition in Literary Short Story, November 2000.

Avital Gad-Cykman's stories seem to raise controversies on a regular basis, but some have been published in: Salon ("Perfect for This World", "The Future of Color"), Mondadori.com ("Perfetta per questo mondo"), The Blue Review ("Cousins & Fourteen"), The Café Irreal ("The Breakthrough", AIM, Eclectica, The ShallowEnd, Short Story Magazine, and Imago Quennsland Uni ("Red Dust").

Others are forthcoming in: In a Nutshell Anthology, the summer issue of HAPPY, and Karawane Magazine.

Her prize winning story "Light Years" can be found in Hebrew in Hamegeira.

Avital is a feminine name meaning "my father is the dew," or rather "she is the dew's daughter." She is a native of Israel who has lived in Brazil for the past eleven years with her husband and two kids. She has been a lawyer, a marionette manufacturer and manipulator, and an interior decorator, among other things.

She has just completed her short story collection "Light Reflection over Blues," and she is at work on her novel that combines the magical with tough reality.

The story "Princes on Airplanes" is dedicated to the Brazilian girls who suffer poverty and injustice.

Avital can be reached at: avital_gc@yahoo.com.