This edition of VAINE is featuring a mix of the best emerging writing and art on the Environment and current events.
This issue also features art from established artists Liina Klauss and Ben Carter who kindly allowed us to publish their incredibly powerful works on environmental waste and consumerism in their respective media of land art and artistic photography. We also have a special update on the Belarus protests from Moscow writer Sergey Gusev. As ever our poetry section includes works from some great emerging talent speaking on current events and the subjects of this issue. We also have an extract from the forthcoming novel by FE Lehane in our fiction section.
This timely piece of work is a must-read for those interested in hearing new voices in arts and literature.

ISSUE II
THE ENVIRONMENT

MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS
LIINA KLAUSS
Artist
Liina klauss is a German land-artist (1974) who explores visual and conceptual perceptions of waste, specifically marine pollution. She translates environmental pollution into over-flowing installations of screaming colours and horrifying beauty. liina started to make environmental installations in Hong Kong in 2011, after quitting her career as a fashion-designer. One of her main objectives is to involve people into her creation process. "Creative action is a tool for transformation and connection and ultimately change." she says, "Art is great. Making art is greater." Today liina creates everything from delicate mosaics to large scale land-art.
LAURA GARCÍA BORREGO
Graphic Designer & Illustrator
Laura is graduate in Fine Arts and works as graphic designer and illustrator in Madrid, Spain. Ilustration has played an important part in her life, beginning as a hobby and now as her work. Ecology, equality, nature and wildlife are essential subjects in her designs. Her art is an expression of her personality and interests together with a delicate style, carefully-seleced colours and attention to minute detail.
MELANIE WICHLEIN
Illustrator & Graphic Designer
Laura is graduate in Fine Arts and works as graphic designer and illustrator in Madrid, Spain. Ilustration has played an important part in her life, beginning as a hobby and now as her work. Ecology, equality, nature and wildlife are essential subjects in her designs. Her art is an expression of her personality and interests together with a delicate style, carefully-seleced colours and attention to minute detail.
DANIELLE ZIPKIN
Poet
Danielle Zipkin lives in Brooklyn with her husband, plants, plecostomus, and roomba. She has poems published or forthcoming in several publications. When she’s not educating middle schoolers, writing, or quarantining, she enjoys dancing, scuba diving, and getting lost in bookstores.
AARON FACER
Poet
Aaron Facer grew up in a small village in North Wales. For as long as he can remember, he has been an obsessive maker of ‘stuff’ – dens, paintings, songs, pyramids made of twigs and twine – and the ‘stuff’ he makes these days tends to look a lot like poetry. He has a MA in creative writing from Cardiff University and his poems have appeared in Lucent Dreaming, the Cardiff Review, Kosmos Journal and Verse-Virtual. He currently lives in Cardiff with his wife and two rabbits.
OSKAR LEONARD
Author & Poet
Oskar Leonard is a seventeen-year-old transgender author and poet from the UK. He is also a senior editor at The Altruist, a poetry and prose editor at All Ears India and a creative writing intern at FOURALL Magazine. He has written six books: three novels, two poetry anthologies and a novella. His work often covers the natural world, using it as a mirror for our current society and social issues, as well as reflecting his personal experience as a trans person. His short works have appeared in publications such as Potted Purple Mag, ARMONíA ZINE and Fever Dream Journal.
KIYARY
Artist
Kiyary is an artist, storyteller and illustrator. A native explorer born in Peru, a traveler, mountaineer and adventurer who is always hungry for knowledge and new places to discover. She is a defender of human rights, and a passionate advocate for nature and the environment. She illustrates these subjects to reach others about current issues and concerns, she also loves to plein-air as an homage to the natural world. She works on digital media using Procreate; and traditional media using Oils, Gouache and pastels.
SAM WILKINSON
Creative Producer
Sam Wilkinson is a Creative Producer working predominantly in design, animation and live-action. Spurred on by curbs and restrictions, he has used his free time to begin a freelance writing career, and has written articles centred mostly around love, relationships, film and culture. He lives and works in Bethnal Green with his partner Esther.
KIRSTY MEADE
Artist
Kirsty explores the subject of life and nature within her work, to present a message of environmental or social importance. Her work and intention are centred in benefiting the areas of life which humanity, and more so, our leadership, has failed. These areas focus on speciesism, and unethical production and consumption. She uses her practice to encourage better decision-making in the person receiving it, using materials as sustainable as possible in production.
BEN CARTER
Artist
Ben Carter is an illustrator and graphic designer based in London. His artistic approach has evolved and moved between several visual mediums over the course of his career, in playful and experimental ways. More recently he has returned to his passion for the natural environment, working with different mediums to explore how art can be used to communicate environmnental issues.
VIRGINIA LEKUONA
Artist
Virginia Lekuona is a graduate of Advertising and Journalism. She loves visual poetry, playing with images to evoke their 'ironic power'. Using objects out of place, taken out of context, and relocated to seek new meaning. The optical poems propose a different perspective that tries to provoke the desire to play with the words and the objects.
AMY JASEK
Poet
Texas born and raised, Amy Jasek graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in Theatre and Dance in 1999. She then spent a decade in other, colder places, ignoring her passion for writing, before settling back down in the Lone Star State and eventually picking up her pencil again. She is also a dedicated, sometimes-professional, film photographer and cyanotype artist, and mother to one precocious teenage hopeful-author, science-minded daughter. Amy is currently based in Round Rock, TX.
JACK STACEY
Writer & Poet
Jack is a writer and poet born 1985, Salisbury, Wiltshire. He has a BA and an MA in Creative Writing. During his time at university, he won a poetry award and directed a play for the Theatre Royal in Winchester. Most notably, he likes tea and converting tiny life particles into poems. Jack uses his vast knowledge of film and television for quizzes. At the moment, he’s co-writing a television script and dabbling in acting.
MEADOW Z
Writer
MeadowZ is a writer from Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. She loves reading, writing and taking photos whenever she can manage during her journeys. Always a storyteller, MeadowZ hopes to see more of the world, learn new things, meet amazing people and work harder for the voices of women and people who are struggling to find their ways in life. Her motto is "Your true value lies in your stories, experiences and memories."
CÒISEAM MACNÈILL
Writer
Còiseam MacNèill spends his time meandering around the sodden walks of the West of Scotland, when he’s not studying philosophy in Kent. Many of his stories pick up where someone finds themselves in conversation with the land around them, the trees, the rain, and the Sìdhe who wander in and out of his work without regard for invitation, theme, or genre. When in less mystical moods, his writing paces around over memory and the stories we tell ourselves in life.
BELLA PELSTER
Poet
Bella Pelster views writing as a way to create something out of chaotic, pure emotion, no matter how strange and unseemly that something is. As we increasingly spend more of our lives online, there’s a tendency to filter out the ugly - and this is something that Bella tries to avoid in her writing. If we honour what’s undesirable, we may take inspiration from it. When she’s not scurrying to and from part-time jobs or doing university work, Bella loves visiting charity shops and watching stop-motion films.
VICTORIA SENDRA
Photographer
Victoria Sendra is a photographer born in Alicante. It was while studying journalism that she first discovered her passion for photography and visual art. On finishing her degree she took a Masters in Photography at the UPV Valencia, which helped her solidify her technical and artistic knowledge. She currently works as a fashion and product photographer in Alicante.
