Franklin Ard is the Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Rogue Owl Press. He is a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop and the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program. Prior to founding Rogue Owl Press, he served as Fiction Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Oracle Fine Arts Review and Managing Editor of Stonecoast Review. He holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of South Alabama, where he teaches writing courses.
Franklin’s fiction and poetry blurs many genres, from science fiction, fantasy, and mystery to magical realism and Southern gothic. Over the years, his writing has appeared in numerous venues, such as Marrow Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Tales, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Deep Magic. He resides in Mobile, Alabama with his wife and son, where they enjoy the humid frog weather. Find him online at www.franklinard.com.
About Rogue Owl Press Rogue Owl Press is an independent publisher specializing in startling stories. We’re drawn to writing that is entertaining, exciting, and captivating, while simultaneously powerful, complex, and genre-bending. Writing may be considered startling for many reasons. While dark fiction such as horror comes to mind as indicative of the most viscerally startling of all fiction, writing may be equally startling in its raw honesty about the human condition. Startling stories may also take the form of a thrilling tale that leaves the reader breathless by the finale, or a story that contemplates existential reckoning. Likewise, a poem may startle the reader with its aesthetic beauty and poignancy. A story may be startling in its fantastical worldbuilding or the vividness of its characters and their own emotional lives. A work may even startle the reader through the avenue of absurd humor. In short, we publish writing that stops us, as readers, in our tracks—that jolts us in astonishing ways. We seek creative work that makes us ponder the universe from a new angle and provides an opening to fall into another reality. In the words of Jack Kerouac, we want to feel everything all at once. Startling stories transcend any one genre, style, or storytelling philosophy. A startling work of art may color within the lines of genre conventions, or it may blur those lines—or defy expectations altogether. But such works all have one thing in common: their beating hearts. Startling stories are alive. Find Rogue Owl Press online at www.rogueowlpress.com.
