The Muleskinner Journal

The Muleskinner Journal

We are an online literary publication. We are also a community. If you send us stuff, publish stuff with us, or read what we publish, you're a Muleskinner too. 

Our goal is to feature work that delights and provokes. Work that gathers strength from diversity. That goes outside the box on purpose, and for a purpose.  

We work in themes as jumping off points. They are prompts rather than subject matter. They are koans. Our collection of work on a theme becomes your meditations on that theme. They’re mediations that could take us anywhere. They set us free of the theme, not tie us down to it.

If you live with courage, we want you to be a Muleskinner too.

Your Team

Gary Campanella first remembers screaming when his sister’s hair caught fire as she leaned over a jack-o-lantern to see the candle inside.  He was three and she was two and they were sitting at the kitchen table of the small apartment their parents rented in Springfield, MA.  They were alone in the room, but their father raced in and smothered the flames against his bare chest.  Gary was given credit for saving her life, something he reminds her about every Halloween, just before she reminds him that he screams like a girl. 

Gary squandered his 1981 college degree from Ripon College with twenty years of travel, long distance backpacking, adventures big and small, and otherwise hoboing it around the world. After surviving Y2K, he moved to Los Angeles and began a real adventure: marriage, a corporate job, buying a house, raising kids, and getting a dog. 

In 2014 he began writing. In earnest. He has completed manuscripts for a novel, a memoir of a Pacific Crest Trail adventure, many short stories, and a chapbook of poetry.  He is writing like his sister’s hair is on fire.  He is writing before he forgets. 

In 2020, Gary founded the online literary journal, Muleskinner Journal. 

In addition to Muleskinner Journal, Gary writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online publications.  He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022 and received Honorable Mention for the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize.  He still lives in Los Angeles.

John Romagna learned to love poetry in high school, when a teacher asked him to study Yeats. That’s when he first experienced our need for powerful language. Writing helps him keep strong connections with family, friends and other writers. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Karen, who is a landscape painter. His most recently published poem, ‘Stories of an Empire,’ appears in River Heron Review issue 7.1, February 1, 2024. Mary Oliver is the poet he goes to for inspiration.

Peter Andrews has been a speechwriter, a radio producer, an innovation consultant, and a chemist. He has written 8 short plays (produced), dozens of short stories, 100s of articles, and over 200 speeches. He attended Clarion, Bread Loaf, and Stowe Stowe Labs. In 2022, he was one of five Blue Sky fellows, and since 9/21, his scripts have been finalists/semifinalists/2nd round in  Austin Film Festival, ISA Family, Emerging Screenwriters, and Hollyshorts.

Thomas Phalen retired from the practice of law in 2022 after 38 years working as counsel for the condemned in Phoenix, Arizona. During that time (and before) he wrote prose and poetry. He has produced seven (or is it eight?) collections of poetry and a very slow work in progress collection of short stories.  In 2018 he attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference where he met and threw in with a small gaggle of desperadoes who are among the editors of the Muleskinner Journal. He signed on as a proud member of the editorial scrum when the Journal was founded. He has published a poetry chapbook, a smattering of single poems, and a few short stories during his lackluster and modest writing career. He has failed utterly to complete two novels. He splits his time between Phoenix, Arizona and Dublin, Ireland.

He is on indeterminate leave from his editorial duties at the Muleskinner Journal as he pursues his M.Phil in Creative Writing degree at Trinity College Dublin, where he continues to scriven and produce poetry. Barring catastrophe, he will obtain his degree this year (2024) and return to help shore up the editorial staff under the stern command of supreme and fearless leader, Gary Campanella.

June Stoddard is a Santa Monica based writer, poet, and literary magazine editor. Her work is published in Blue Sky Press' Home, Love Letters, the soon to come Meaning of Things, and in numerous literary journals. June's work can be heard live at Slow Lightning Lit, the Rapp Saloon, Library Girl, and Women Who Submit-Quarterly Open Mic. She is an active member of Women Who Submit, an organization that seeks to empower women and non-binary writers by creating spaces for sharing, supporting and encouraging literary submissions. Carolyn See, Jim Krusoe, Peggy Dobreer and her outstanding English teachers all count as writing mentors. Her day gigs have included running JS Executive Search, nonprofit fundraising, producing films and theatrical tours, acting, and being constantly inspired by her twin daughters. June is a graduate of UW-Madison with a double Major in English & Theatre.

 (fun fact- her high school English SAT score was a perfect 800)

Julia Teweles is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor, and publisher. In 1984, she Founded and was CEO of Roxbury Publishing Company, where she published over 120 books. She sold the company to Oxford University Press in 2007 to pursue other endeavors. From 2010 to 2012, Julia was the Executive Editor in the social sciences for Wiley Publishing.  

Prior to publishing, Julia ran a prominent editorial service for writers in Los Angeles, chiefly screenwriters, novelists, and nonfiction authors. She edited work for Joan Didion and Orson Welles, among other luminaries.  

She is the author of “The Stalker,” Zebra Books, 1984, a psychological ghost story, and “The Wilds,” Dell Books, 1989 (“Stand by Me” meets “Deliverance”). In 2025, Fathom Press will be publishing a new edition of Teweles’ “The Wilds.” Fathom specializes in revitalizing out-of-print classics from the 1970s and 1980.

Julia attended Beloit College, where she double-majored in Comparative Literature and International Relations. She also completed graduate work in French civilization at the University of Paris, Sorbonne.  

Volunteer for Social Action, Nashuva Temple
Serving on the Board of the League of Women Voters Greater Los Angeles
Member of Hollywood NOW (National Organization of Women)
Volunteer, LA Conservancy (historic preservation) 

Please also see Julia's website for more about her extraordinary life and career, including details about her gender transition.