Aura publishes artist spotlights to provide readers with the opportunity to get to know the authors and artists published in Vol. 48 Issue No. 1 of Aura Literary Arts Review. In this artist spotlight article, we introduce Denis Bell and Angelina Scuffle…
Denis Bell is a maker of mathematical formulas and small fictions, 
which he draws from a common font. His writing has been published in “Grub Street,” “The Maine Review,” “Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine,” “Journal of Microliterature,” “Literary Orphans” and many other places. A collection of his short fiction titled “A Box of Dreams” was published by Spartan Press in 2020 and a second edition is currently in the works.
Denis most admires works from Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Dickens, and his favorite short writers are de Maupassant and Roald Dahl. Since he has been writing fiction, he reads a lot of short stories and flash fiction online. In doing so, Denis has come across some tremendous pieces which he deems have probably influenced his writing more than anything.
His piece in Aura is a small humor piece about his car, a Mazda Miata that he has owned for about 12 years. When looking at the car recently, he saw that it had a bunch of spots on the hood and thought, “We are growing old together!” This inspired the name of his piece in Aura:
Angelina Scuffle (she/her/hers) came to Alabama less than two years ago from Marietta, GA to major in history and English at UAB. To Angelina, art can come in just about any medium. It’s a form of expression, or it’s a piece of something you just have to create—with or without a deeper meaning. Her choice of medium varies depending on her mood, but in regards to her work shown in Aura, she finds poetry to be a recent favorite.
Though she didn’t exactly know the rules of poetry until later in her academic career, Angelina respects their purpose completely. Nevertheless, she still finds herself straying from them. When she writes, it’s usually in some kind of moment. A moment of pain, of frustration, of confusion, and sometimes of comfort. She deems her work a form of release—a hole in a wall made by a fist—and the relationship between her work and thought-out structure can, at best, be thought of as an acquaintance. She loves her work just as it is, though. It’s not hard to find yourself belittling or critiquing the things you find joy in from time to time, but it’s a habit she finds herself trying to stop on better days.
Within Aura, Angelina wants to show multiple sides of what her works can mean. Though not everything needs to be deep in meaning, she admires the way words can change a mood or a day. That’s what she tries to accomplish. She also intends to explore not just her poetry, but ways to explore the works of others, like Christina Rossetti, whose work “In an Artist’s Studio” inspired her poem “Time and Brush Strokes” in Aura’s issue.
