Contributors

Ana Cristina Alvarez attends the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is pursuing an MFA in fiction. She bakes one hell of a flan.

Peter Amos is a native of rural Virginia. The son of an English teacher and a librarian, he studied music in college and moved to New York where he works, performs, and writes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brevity, The Museum of Americana, Bitter Southerner, and others.

Anna Elise Anderson lives in St. Pete, Florida. After spending several years in Brooklyn doing odd jobs and freelance writing, she recently returned home to pursue a more peaceful existence. She’s currently working as a web writer for an online wildlife art gallery and spends her free time reading with her Belgian Shepherd mutt Minelli. Her work has appeared in 491 Magazine, Quick Fiction, Charlotte Viewpoint, and Grasslimb. She loves the sun.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Everything is Everything (Write Bloody Publishing), as well as the nonfiction book, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press). Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, PANK, Rattle,Conduit, La Petite Zine, decomP, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Thrush andMuzzle, among others. Her recent awards include the ArtsEdge Writer-In-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2011), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (2011) and the Amy Clampitt Residency (2013). Her sixth book of poetry, The Year of No Mistakes, will be released by Write Bloody Publishing in Fall 2013. For more information, please visit her website at www.aptowicz.com.

Jose Angel Araguz has had work most recently in Poet Lore and The Dandelion Farm Review, and has been featured in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. His chapbook, The Wall, is published by Tiger’s Eye Press. He runs The Friday Influence, a poetry blog at: thefridayinfluence.wordpress.com.

Diego Báez writes regularly for Booklist and Whole Beast Rag. Other work has appeared most recently in Kweli, Rain Taxi, and The Review of Higher Education. He lives and teaches in Chicago.

Richard Baldasty’s poetry and short prose have appeared in Pinyon, Epoch, and New Delta Review among other literary magazines. Work archived online includes publication in AntipodeanSF, Dark Fire, Café Irreal, and Marco Polo Literary Arts; Twitter verse at escarp and Twitter fiction at Seven by Twenty; literary collage in Fickle Muses, Ray’s Road Review, and forthcoming (May) with Big Bridge; and text/image at Shuf Poetry and (mid-April) Burrow Press Review.

Beth Bates lives in the Indianapolis area, where she stays busy writing and editing. She is the Prose Editor for Booth, the Story Editor for Curly Red Stories, and a Butler University MFA Candidate.

Matt Bell is the author of Cataclysm Baby, a novella, and How They Were Found, a collection of fiction. His stories have been selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is the Senior Editor at Dzanc Books, where he also runs the literary magazine The Collagist, and in the fall he will join the creative writing faculty at Northern Michigan University.

Marie-Helene Bertino has been a diner waitress, a muralist, and a singer in a band. Her stories have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Inkwell, The Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, and West Branch. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize three times, receiving the award in 2007 and a Special Mention in 2011. She hails from Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn, where for six years she was the Associate Editor of One Story. She has taught for The Gotham Writer’s Workshop and One Story’s Emerging Writer’s Workshop and has received fellowships from Hedgebrook Residency and NYC’s Center for Fiction, where she is a current fellow. Her collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award, judged by Jim Shepard, and will be published in fall of 2012. FiveChapters recently published her short story “Great, Wondrous.”

Gabriel Blackwell is the author of Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer (CCM) and Critique of Pure Reason (Noemi), both out in November. He is the reviews editor of The Collagist and a contributor to Big Other, among other things.

A.C. Bohleber is a recent college graduate located in Louisville, Kentucky. Originally from the South, she attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where she won the Ken Smith Fiction Award. She now works a day job, so she can spend money on books, travel, and, of course, rent. In the chaos she makes time to write prose and occasionally poetry.

Hope Bordeaux is a freelance writer, tutor, and librarian. She blogs about yoga, creativity, and other stuff at www.hopebordeaux.com.

A graduate from the MFA program at the University of Houston, Andrew Brininstool’s work has appeared in Barrelhouse, Green Mountains Review, Quick Fiction, the Tin House blog, Best New American Voices 2010 and has received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award from Mid-American Review as well as the Editors’ Prize from /nor.

Bailey Bridgewater‘s work has appeared in Crack the Spine, The Molotov Cocktail, The Eunoia Review, Nanoism, SubTerranean, As You Were, and Fiction on the Web.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has published works in Thrice Fiction, Storm Cellar, Star 82 Review, and soon in The Cortland Review. He won the SuRaa short fiction award in 2011.

Charles Byrne is a poet and philosopher living in San Francisco, with recent or forthcoming publications in Clarion, Emrys, and Poetry Quarterly.

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. She also watches over a veritable army of pets, including her six, very spoiled, snakes. You can find her here: carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com.

Chelsea Catherine won the Mary C Mohr nonfiction award through the Southern Indiana Review in 2018. Her novella Blindsided won the Clay Reynolds competition and was published in October of 2018. Her novel Summer of the Cicadas won the Quill Prose Award and will be published in 2020. Find her at chelseacatherinewriter.com.

Phillip Cerwin studies criminology, psychology, and poetry at UNC Wilmington. He has previously won the Erma Drum Poetry Competition.

Michael Chaney teaches in the English department at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Fugitive Vision (Indiana Univ. Press, 2008) and the editor of Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels (Wisconsin, 2010). His writings have appeared in Molotov Cocktail, Hobo Pancakes, Not One of Us, Gone Lawn and elsewhere. He is currently working on a novel about the absurdities of the pharmaceutical industry.

Chloe N. Clark is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in such places as Prick of the Spindle, Rosebud, Fogged Clarity, and Verse Wisconsin. She is at work on a novel about magicians, enjoys making doughnuts, and is otherwise awesome. Follow her on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes or check out her blog Pints and Cupcakes.

Karen Collier is a native Texan. She spent twenty long years in high tech before becoming a high school English teacher and discovering how the other half lives: in poverty. She left teaching after five years to pursue life as a creative writer. Her work has been published in Full Grown People, The Austin-American Statesman, The First Line, and The Ocotillo Review.

Linda Conroy is a retired social worker who uses poetry to show the simplicity and complexity of behaviors that make us human. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Snapdragon, Door is Ajar, and Soul-Lit. She is the author of a poetry collection, Ordinary Signs.

William Cordeiro lives in Tucson, Arizona and is a currently a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell completing his dissertation on 18th century British literature. His creative work appears in many literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Fourteen Hills,Copper Nickel, and Harpur Palate. He is grateful for residencies from Risley Residential College, Provincetown Community Compact, Ora Lerman Trust, ART 342, Blue Mountain Center, and Petrified Forest National Park.

Eugene Cross is the author of Fires of Our Choosing.

Leesa Cross-Smith lives and writes in Kentucky. She loves baseball, slushies and cowboy boots. Her short story, “Whiskey & Ribbons,” won Editor’s Choice in the 2011 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Word Riot, matchbook, DOGZPLOT, NAP, Little Fiction, Storychord, The Rumpus, Bluestem Magazine and Carve Magazine. She can be found online at LeesaCrossSmith.com or LeesaCrossSmith.tumblr.com.

Michelle E. Crouch is one of the co-founders of APIARY Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Indiana Review, The Journal of Information Ethics, and various places online (links to which can be found at mcrouch.tumblr.com). She is currently an MFA candidate at UNC Wilmington.

Winner of the 2012 Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction Contest, Justin Lawrence Daugherty manages Sundog Lit from a basement in Omaha, Nebraska. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Normal School, NANO Fiction, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, NAP, Housefire, Bluestem, and elsewhere. He writes some on this blogand says strange things on twitter @jdaugherty1081. He is at work on a novel and is slowly working on a novella.

Isabelle Davis still has plastic glow-in-the-dark stars hanging on her ceiling. She worked as a writer and Columns Editor for Pacemaker winner Niles West News and currently edits for The Lawrentian. Her work has appeared in Dirty Chai and Wes Anderzine. She is currently pursuing a Creative Writing degree. You can find her on twitter @isa13itch.

Joe DeLuca lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works in advertising. His poems can be found in another tree house, somewhere in the backwoods of North Guilford, Connecticut, where he was raised.

Darren C. Demaree is living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, and his first collection, “As We Refer To Our Bodies,” is scheduled to be published early in 2013.

Nicola DeRobertis-Theye is an MFA student at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she is a coordinator of the Young Writers Workshop and the fiction editor of Ecotone.

Stephanie Lynn Devine is a PhD in Fiction student at Georgia State University. Her stories are forthcoming in Fiction Southeast and Glassworks Magazine.

Asha Dore’s essays and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Sweet, Stirring, theNewerYork, The Rumpus, and Best of the Net. Asha lives in Oregon with her husband and two daughters where she is working on a novel about a hurricane.

William Doreski’s most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). His work has appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Natural Bridge. His blog is at williamdoreski.blogspot.com.

Erik Doughty is an Asian American writer living in Boston, whose work has been published in The Drum, Corium Magazine, and Annalemma, among others. He is almost a lawyer and carries a notebook, air guitar, and inhaler with him wherever he goes. More of his stories can be found at erikdoughty.wordpress.com.

Bored and raised in New Jersey, Brian Erickson began making films in high school and continued his studies at NYU, where he focused on writing and directing, thus sparing the world from his “acting.” Recently, ideas that aren’t quite stories or screenplays have sprung to mind, so he has begun writing them, rekindling his fondness for poetry. You can view some of his work on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/brianerickson).

Meghan Flaherty is an MFA Candidate at Columbia University in Nonfiction and Literary Translation. She writes memoir, translates poetry and prose from Spanish, and is currently working on a book-length personal history of Argentine tango. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Alchemy, Printed, Columbia: A Journal Of Literature and Art, The New Inquiry, and the Iowa Review. http://meghanbeanflaherty.wordpress.com/

Haphazardly home-schooled for about a decade, Maria Flores was raised on Egyptian mythology, Aztec ghost stories, and Tolkien in a house of cultish Catholicism. She has been writing fiction since she discovered how at age 11.

Chris Fox has been published in The Blue Collar Review, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Wavelength, and Rosebud, where his poem “You” was a runner-up for the William Stafford award. He is the author of the No Wave joke book NO-YES//NOISE, which he composed while doing stand-up during the years 2009-2011. He currently resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

David Galef has published over a dozen books and shows no sign of stopping. His latest are the short story collection My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Books) and Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom (Tuttle). He is a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Montclair State University.

Phil Gallos has been a newspaper reporter and columnist, a researcher/writer in the historic preservation field, and has spent 31 years working in academic libraries (which is more interesting than it sounds). Most recently, his writing has been published in Carbon Culture Review, The Writing Disorder, STORGY Magazine, and Brushfire!, among others, and is forthcoming in Streetlight Magazine and Wisconsin Review. He lives and writes in Saranac Lake, NY.

Roxane Gay lives and writes in the Midwest.

A Colorado native, Deanne Gertner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Regis University. Her fiction has appeared in Quaint Magazine and Scintilla while her art criticism has appeared in Daily Serving and Presenting Denver. She serves on the board for Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, the largest literary center in the Rocky Mountain region.

Lena Gluck’s writing has appeared in the Great Lake Review. She is an assistant librarian and teaches the Young Authors Academy at the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse. Her writing can be found on the blog experienceswithlanguage.wordpress.com.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze” with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review.

Camille Griep lives and writes in Seattle, Washington. Her work has been featured inEvery Day Fiction, The First Line, Bound Off, Short, Fast & Deadly, and Punchnel’s.

Katy Gunn (katygunn.blogspot.com) is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama with writing forthcoming from Birkensnake, Jellyfish, H_NGM_N, and more.

Elizabeth Word Gutting lives in Washington, D.C. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Washington Post, The Quotable, Connotation Press, and an anthology of D.C. women writers published by Paycock Press. She teaches creative writing workshops for kids and teens at Writopia Lab.

Anita Haas is a Canadian writer based in Madrid, Spain. She has published books on film, as well as two novelettes, a short story collection, and articles, poems and fiction in both English and Spanish. In 2015, three of her flash stories won prizes. Her free time is spent listening to flamenco with her husband and two cats.

Yael Hacohen is a PhD student at UC Berkeley. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was an ‎NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square Literary ‎Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her poems appear or forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Every Day ‎Poets Magazine, Nine Lines, and many more. She was a finalist in the 2015 Glimmer Train Very Short Story Competition, the 2015 ‎Consequence Prize in Poetry, and the 2013 MSLexia Poetry Prize for Women.‎

Mary Haidri is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the play Every Path (La Jolla Playhouse & Moxie Theatre). Her work has appeared in Winter Tangerine, Portland Review, Nightingale, Bird’s Thumb, and Fairy Tale Review. She was the recipient of the 2017 Fairy Tale Review Poetry Award and is now a poetry reader for the journal. Visit her at nettleworks.com.

Alle C. Hall is a semi-finalist in Screencraft’s Cinematic Short Story Contest (Finalists announced on March 14th, 2018. Send her good vibes). She is also a semifinalist in Hippocampus Magazine‘s “Remember in November” Creative Nonfiction Contest; a Best of the Net nominee; and First Place winner in The Richard Hugo House New Works competition. Favorite publications include Creative Nonfiction, Brevity (blog), The Citron Review, Crack the Spine, jmww, Bust, Literary Mama, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger (Contributing Writer), among others. Claim to fame: interviewed Leonard Nimoy. “He was a bit of a pill. Disappointing.” allehall.wordpress.com

Paul Handley has published humor in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review; Gargoyle; McSweeney’s Internet Tendency; Monkeybicycle; a short play performed at Pulp Diction III; a short play published in the Mayo Review; hundreds of poems; and a full length book of poetry entitled 5-Tool Poet from Punkin House Press.

Rebecca Hanssens-Reed is a writer and translator whose work can be found in Dressing Room Poetry Journal, The Saint Ann’s Review and The Reader. She is currently at work on a translation of Jorge Ángel Pérez’s book of short stories, They’re Not So Elegant in Havana. She works at an organic bakery and is successfully growing her first tomato plant in Northampton, MA.

Kerry Headley’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag, and Tawdry Bawdry. She writes and teaches in Wilmington, NC.

Kyle Hemmings has been published in Wigleaf, Storyglossia, Elimae, Matchbook, This Zine Will Save Your Life, and other zines. He lives and writes in New Jersey. He loves cats and dogs and sixties garage bands.

Darren Higgins is a writer, editor, and artist living in Waterbury Center, Vermont. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Darren has contributed essays, interviews, and commentaries to Numero Cinq, Jacket2, and Vermont Public Radio. His poems and stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, La Fovea, Quick Fiction, RAZED, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere.

John Oliver Hodges lives in Brooklyn. He wrote The Love Box, a collection of short stories that won the Tartt First Fiction Award, and War of the Crazies, a novella. His writing and photography have appeared in 100 journals, and can be found here: goo.gl/rNFFWT and here: goo.gl/eUihUZ and here: goo.gl/Lo8vec

Doug Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer. His first book, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, appeared on the Canopic Publishing (TN) imprint in April 2006 and earned an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Best Short Fiction (Bronze Medal). Several of the selections in the book appeared in other publications, and one story, “The Blarney Stone,” was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. Other stories and poems of his have appeared in numerous online and print literary journals and a second book of prose, The Tenth Inning, was released independently in 2015.

Ben Hoffman’s fiction is forthcoming in REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters,Dogwood, and Revolution House, where he won third place in the 2012 Flash Fiction contest. He is a contributing writer for Construction Literary Magazine. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he tweets @benrhoffman.

Lucy Huber is a third year MFA candidate and teaching assistant at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is studying Creative Nonfiction.

Mark Jackley is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Every Green Word (Finishing Line Press), and a full-length collection, There Will Be Silence While You Wait (Plain View Press). His poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Pebble Lake Review, Crate, 10×3 Plus and other journals. He lives in Sterling, VA.

Dominique Johnson is from Shreveport, Louisiana.  He is a Louisiana State University graduate and he loves writing about life as an experience.  He tries to think of every success, failure, or experience that he has as an opportunity to create a story or learn something new.  He aspires to inspire through his writing.

Sally J. Johnson is the Managing Editor of Ecotone and the Poetry Editor of Atlantis. She is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her poetry can be read in Fogged Clarity and The Boiler Journal.

Timothy Stewart Johnson survived the 1960s with little more than some minor cuts and bruises and now works as a writer and designer in corporate marketing.

Nick D’Annunzio Jones lives and writes in Seattle. He is a former reporter for The New York Times and has published poetry in numerous journals in the United States, Ireland, Sweden and Australia.

Vaiju Joshi’s fiction has appeared/is forthcoming in PANK, Scissors & Spackle, Bartleby Snopes, Untoward, Waterhouse Review, First Stop Fiction and Adelaide Review amongst others. An engineer by profession, she is currently editing her first novel. She lives in Adelaide, Australia.

Jennifer Juneau‘s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice, for the Million Writers Award, and a Sundress Best of the Net and has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Columbia Journal, Evergreen Review, Pank, Live Mag!, Sensitive Skin Magazine, Seattle Review, and elsewhere. She has a novel, UberChef USA, due out this year by Spork Press, as well as a poetry collection by Is A Rose Press. She lives in New York City where she is active in prose/poetry readings on the lower east side and Brooklyn, namely La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and KGB Bar.

Sarah Kay is a poet from New York City who has been performing her spoken word poetry since she was fourteen years old. She is perhaps best known for her talk at the 2011 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, which garnered two standing ovations and has moved audiences around the world. Sarah holds a Masters Degree in The Art of Teaching from Brown University and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Grinnell College. Her first book, B was ranked #1 Poetry Book on Amazon. Her second book, No Matter the Wreckage is available from Write Bloody Publishing. Sarah is the founder of Project VOICE, an organization that uses spoken word poetry as a literacy and empowerment tool in schools and communities around the world. For more, see: www.kaysarahsera.com

Charles Kell is a PhD student at The University of Rhode Island and editor of The Ocean State Review. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, IthacaLit, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He teaches in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Erin Entrada Kelly’s fiction has been published widely in journals like Keyhole, Monkeybicycle and Kyoto Journal. Her debut novel is forthcoming in 2013 from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books. She lives and writes in suburban Philadelphia and is staff editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles.

Caroline Kessler is a writer, editor, and facilitator currently living in south Berkeley. Her poetry and prose has been published in The Susquehanna Review, Sundog Lit, sparkle&blink, Superstition Review, Anderbo, and elsewhere. Stalk her online at carokess.com.

Laura Kochman, originally from New Jersey, is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she’s also the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work is found or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, PANK, Jellyfish, The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts, alice blue review, and others.

Leonard Kress has had recent work in Barn Owl Review, Passages North, Harvard Review, and River Styx, and Atticus Review. Most recent poetry collection is Living in the Candy Store. He currently teaches philosophy, religion, and creative writing at Owens College in Ohio.

Barth Landor is the author of a novel, A Week in Winter, and an essay, “Forty Passages for Shakespeare.”

Michael Landweber’s stories have appeared in Fugue, Fourteen Hills, Gargoyle, Barrelhouse and a bunch of other places. His first novel, We, will be published by Coffeetown Press in September 2013. He is an Associate Editor at Potomac Review and a contributor at Pop Matters. He won’t find it at all creepy if you follow him @mlandweber.

Alexis Larkin lives and writes in northern New Jersey. Her uterus prefers Malibu. Alexis’s poetry has been selected for publication in The Barnstormer, Fat City Review, and Pea River Journal.

Kathleen Brewin Lewis is an Atlanta writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Yemassee, Southern Humanities Review, Foundling Review, Heron Tree, Weave Magazine, and The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. V: Georgia. She’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is senior editor of Flycatcher journal. She has an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University.

A. D Lin is a writer, teacher, and lactose intolerant turophile.

Susan L. Lin hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean, which these pieces are excerpted from, was a semifinalist in the 2012 Gold Line Press chapbook competition. Her short prose has recently appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ghost Town, Hypertext Magazine, Gravel Magazine, Portland Review, and elsewhere.  She blogs intermittently at susanllin.wordpress.com.

Jacob Little is a writer of poetry, CNF, and screenplays. He is a second year MFA student at Minnesota State University. He teaches a freshman composition class and is managing editor of the Blue Earth Review. He also conducts weekly interviews with published authors on KMSU 89.7′s The Weekly Reader.

JJ Lynne is a recent graduate of Merrimack College and recipient of the Bishop Markham Medal. Her poems have won first and second prizes in the Rev. John R. Aherne Poetry Contest and her writing has appeared in Common Ground Review and Meat for Tea. JJ currently works as a library assistant and looks forward to seeing her work in forthcoming issues of Mock Orange Magazine and PANK’s online edition.

Later this month, Fred MacVaugh will arrive at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site in western North Dakota, where he’ll work as a museum technician. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Plainsongs, Plains Song Review, South Dakota Review, and Watershed. He is the Science Editor at Hothouse: A Place of Inquiry, for which he writes a monthly blog that explores the intersections of art, culture, nature, place, and science.

Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” A four-time National Poetry Slam champion, he is the author of two collections of poetry and a book of essays, “What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World.” In April of 2012, Mali completed a 12-year project of convincing 1,000 people to become teachers and marked the occasion by donating 12 inches of his hair to the American Cancer Society.

Ravi Mangla lives in Fairport, NY. His stories have appeared in Mid-American Review,American Short Fiction, Corium Magazine, matchbook, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. A collection of microfictions, Visiting Writers, was published as an ebook by Uncanny Valley Press. He keeps a blog at ravimangla.com.

D. Marquel was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in Chaleur Magazine (July 2018), San Diego Writers, Ink: A Year in Ink Anthology (Vol. 11), City Works Journal (Vols. 23 and 25), and by So Say We All’s VAMP reading series. You can find his work-in-progress at www.instagram.com/d.marquel. He currently resides in San Diego, CA.

Anthony Martin (@pen_tight) studies professional writing at San Diego State University, writes computer mumbo jumbo for the layman, and remains a hopeless, mixed-breed Slavophile.

Sam Martone lives in Tempe, Arizona. He has not yet seen coyotes there.

Mira Mattar is a writer, contributing editor at Mute and 3:AM, and one third of Monster Emporium Press. Her work has appeared in The Literateur, Metazen, Two Serious Ladies and other places. She blogs at http://hermouth.blogspot.com/ Follow her at @miramattar.

Chris McCormick is a fiction writer from California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southeast Review, Flyway, and Fiddleblack, among others. Beginning in the fall, he will attend the MFA program at the University of Michigan. Follow him on Twitter: @chris_mccorm.

John A. McDermott’s poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Cutbank, Cream City Review, Meridian, and Seneca Review. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, he now teaches creative writing and American literature at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he coordinates the BFA program.

Finola McDonald is a Bronx native and coffee enthusiast with a thing for writing. She is currently completing her undergraduate studies at SUNY Purchase in Westchester, NY.

Jill Ann Mceldowney is a model & poet who lives and works out of chicago. Her work has been printed or is forthcoming from foothill lit mag, BLOOM, ghosttown, and smokinggluegun among other notable publications.

Mark McKee is from Dyersburg, TN. His work has appeared recently in Space Squid and Eyeshot. He sometimes reviews books at goodreads.com/markmckeejr.

Katie Miller lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.

Steven Ray Miller is from Colorado. A long time ago, he earned an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He and his super smart wife live in Milwaukee with their two dogs, Otis T. Pooch and Edgar Von HuffNPuff. Steve’s garden is small and sometimes successful.

Yve Miller has worked with horses, boat engines, and barbecue. She is a reviewer of books and teaches students how to form counterarguments and write from their heartbeat. She is going to night school to become somebody. Her first manuscript is in the works.

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil’s Territory, a collection of stories. Recent work appears in Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and Best American Mystery Stories 2008. Follow him on Twitter.

Diana Mumford lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her loving plant, Merle. She is currently working on a collection of multimedia and short fiction companion pieces.

Thomas Mundt is the author of one short story collection, You Have Until Noon to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe (Lady Lazarus Press, 2011), and the father of one human boy, Henry (2011). Teambuilding opportunities and risk management advice can be found at http://www.dontdissthewizard.blogspot.com/.

Ariana Nadia Nash is the winner of the 2011 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry for her first book Instructions for Preparing Your Skin. Her chapbook, Our Blood Is Singing, is forthcoming from Damask Press. She is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize and a MacDowell Colony residency. Her work can be found in Rock & Sling, Main Street Rag, and The Mom Egg, among other journals.

Rachel Natalie dances, writes, and studies at Loyola University Chicago, where she blogs for Arts Alive. She typically carries a handful of starlight peppermints in her coat pocket, and occasionally tweets about her daily experiences, observations, and endeavors as @rachnatale.

Rachael Lynn Nevins is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. She teaches Level II fiction and poetry writing with the Writers Studio and has work published or forthcoming in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, and Literary Mama. She blogs about her days as a writerly work-at-home mom at The Variegated Life and about her reading at Commonplace.

Jason Newport received an MFA in creative writing (fiction) from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His nonfiction has most recently appeared on Bookforum.com, and his short fiction and poetry have appeared in many fine journals. He is an English instructor in the Southwestern College Professional Studies program and a contributing editor for the Chautauqua journal.

Delaney Nolan’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Apt, Gargoyle, Grist, Hobart, Post Road, Wigleaf and other places. Her chapbook “Louisiana Maps” (Ropewalk), winner of the Ropewalk Press Fiction Editor’s Chapbook Prize, will be published this fall.

Meg O’Brien studies creative writing at UNC Wilmington; she will graduate in December. She is addicted to triple-grande-nonfat-no-whip-white mochas from Starbucks. Her favorite part of election season is Saturday Night Live.

David S. Osgood is a short story writer. He resides in Holly Springs, North Carolina, where rural and suburban collide among crepe myrtles. David has a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and a Master’s from Babson College.

Karan Parrack is a native Texan who has taught high school English and English as a Second Language for more than 30 years.

Victoria Peterson-Hilleque’s poems appeared or are forthcoming in Paper Nautilus, The Montucky Review, Poppy Road Review, and other journals. She’s the Poet-In-Residence at Solomon’s Porch Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she also teaches a poetry workshop.

Sara Pirkle is the author of The Disappearing Act, which won the 2016 Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her poems have been published in Rattle, Reed, Entropy, TAB, The Raintown Review, Emrys, and Atticus Review, among others. Sara has received writing fellowships from The Anderson Center, I-Park Foundation, and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. She is the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama, where she also hosts the Pure Products Reading & Lecture Series.

Elizabeth Poreba taught English in New York City high schools for 35 years and now volunteers for environmental groups. Her poems have appeared in Ducts.org, Feminist Studies in Religion, and Commonweal, among others. She has published a chapbook, The Family Calling (Finishing Line Press), and two collections of poems, Vexed and Self Help (Wipf and Stock).

Sean Pravica is a writer and entrepreneur living in Southern California. He has been nominated for writing awards including Sundress Press’ Best of the Net as well as storySouth Million Writer’s Award. His first novel, “Stumbling out the Stable,” is due for release by Pelekinesis Press in November 2015.

Kelly Ramsey lives on Fishers Island, New York, where she co-directs the arts nonprofit The Lighthouse Works. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Orion, and The Material, and she will be a fellow at the MacDowell Colony this fall.

Jim Richards’ poems have been nominated for Best New Poets, two Pushcart Prizes, and have appeared recently in Sugar House Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Juked, Comstock Review, Cumberland River Review and others. He lives in eastern Idaho’s Snake River valley and has received a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. jim-richards.com

Deborah Rocheleau is a language fanatic. Her fiction has been published with the Tin House Open Bar, 100 Word Story, decomP magazinE, Flights, Mock Turtle Zine, and the Boston Literary Magazine. She is currently writing a contemporary young adult novel. She blogs at deborahrocheleau.wordpress.com.

Andrea Rogers is a musician and a Ph.D. Poetry student at Georgia State University. Her work appears in Odradek, The 11th Hour, and elsewhere. She and her band, Night Driving in Small Towns, have appeared in features by Rolling Stone and NPR.

Daniel Romo’s work appears or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Los Angeles Review, MiPOesias, Yemassee, and elsewhere. His first book of poetry, Romancing Gravity, is forthcoming in 2012 from Pecan Grove Press. His book of prose poetry, When Kerosene’s Involved, is forthcoming in 2013 from Black Coffee Press. He teaches creative writing, and bats leadoff and plays shortstop for the Long Beach Barons. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.wordpress.com.

Susan Rukeyser writes stories because she can’t stop. Believe it, she’s tried. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Monkeybicyle, SmokeLong Quarterly, PANK, The View from Here, and WhiskeyPaper, among others. She has one novel out for consideration and another in a drawer. Find her here: www.susanrukeyser.com

Justin Runge lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he serves as poetry editor of Parcel. He is the author of two chapbooks, Plainsight (New Michigan Press, 2012) and Hum Decode (Greying Ghost Press, 2014). Recipient of a 2014 Langston Hughes Award, Runge has published in Best New Poets 2013, Linebreak, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. He can be found at www.justinrunge.me.

Eugene Schottenfeld is an emerging writer, recent law school graduate, and classically trained musician. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his fiancé.

Rebecca Schwab writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in Fringe and The Future Fire, and is forthcoming in Brevity and Slipstream. She serves as acquisitions editor for Leapfrog Press and Crossborder: A Journal of Fiction (Leapfrog Press and Guernica Editions, Canada); teaches creative writing at SUNY Fredonia; and contributes regularly to The Observer.

Mark Seidl loves New York’s Hudson Valley, where he lives and works as a special collections librarian, but each spring the scarcity of dogwood trees in the region saddens him. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alice Blue Review, Birdfeast,NAP, and Thunderclap.

Linda Shapiro is a freelance writer who has published articles, reviews, and essays on dance and the performing arts, architecture, design, and other subjects in numerous publications in the Twin Cities and New York. In her former life she worked as a dancer and choreographer. Her fiction has appeared in the online journals On the Premises and Bending Genres. Her work was shortlisted for the 2019 Fiction Award for the Canadian journal Into the Void.

Robert Anthony Siegel has been alternately confused and inspired by Jesus’ Son for a long time. His web site is robertanthonysiegel.com.

Joel Smith edits fiction for Spork Press out of Tucson, where he teaches writing at the University of Arizona. He has recent work in Wigleaf, Red Lightbulbs, and Cutthroat.

Alex Sobel is a freelance journalist living in Toledo, OH. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post Online; Foundling Review; Ink, Sweat, and Tears; and theNewerYork.

Patrick Somerville’s fourth book, This Bright River, will be out in June from Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown. He lives with his wife and son in Chicago.

Matthew Specktor is the author of the novel American Dream Machine, forthcoming from Tin House. He is Senior Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. You can follow him on Twitter @matthewspecktor.

Ian Starttoday has work forthcoming or published in Apocrypha and Abstractions, Eunoia Review, Foliate Oak, and Feathertale.com. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two cats. He once entertained the idea of starting a lit magazine devoted to cat-themed fiction.

Tim Suermondt has published two full-length books of poems: Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Brendan Sullivan is a lifelong beach bum who has turned from acting to poetry, as he finds it a more remarkable and at times, reliable muse. He also enjoys surfing, sailing and diving. His work has been published at Wordsmiths, The Missing Slate, Every Writer’s Resource, Gutter Eloquence, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, After Tournier, Bareback Magazine and Bare Hands.

Melissa Swantkowski lives in New York. You can find her here: melissaswantkowski.com.

Jessica Thummel was raised in Dodge City, Kansas. Her fiction has been published by Granta and can be read here and here.

Gina Vaynshteyn studies and writes poetry in San Diego. So far, her work has been featured in Bop Dead City, The California Journal of Women Writers, and is forthcoming in Milk Sugar. You can read her book reviews on The Rumpus and light-hearted words of advice on HelloGiggles. Gina frequently updates her twitter @ginainterrupted, especially if she thinks she’s being funny.

Marci Vogel is a native of Los Angeles, where she attends USC’s PhD Program in Literature and Creative Writing as a Provost Fellow. Her poetry has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the AWP Intro Journals Award. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in FIELD, Puerto del Sol, ZYZZYVA, Anti-, and the Seneca, Colorado, and Atlas reviews. Her first chapbook, Valiant, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Donna Vorreyer is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013). Her work has appeared in many journals including Rhino, Linebreak, Cider Press Review, Stirring, Sweet, wicked alice, and Weave. Her fifth chapbook, We Build Houses of Our Bodies was released in late 2013 by Dancing Girl Press, and her second poetry collection is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2016.

After fulfilling a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant in rural northeastern Thailand, Portia Watson has recently accepted a fellowship with an NGO organization near the Thai/Burma border. She is passionate about hearing the stories of others, coffee, and exploring the power written and visual art has to enhance our lived experiences.

K. A. Webb lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she teaches at UAB, writes for Weld for Birmingham, and tends to a dog called Hank.

Rose Wednesday is an MA student in fiction at the University of Maine. She has been published previously in “The Armchair Aesthete” and was the 2013 winner of Maine’s Grady Award for fiction. She writes in Maine and blogs at rosewednesday.tumblr.com.

Brandi Wells is Managing Editor of The Black Warrior Review and Web Editor at Hobart. She is the author of Please Don’t Be upset (Tiny Hardcore Press) andPoisonhorse (Nephew, an imprint of Mud Luscious Press). Her fiction can be found inSalamander, Mid-American Review, 14 Hills and many other journals.

Joshua Willey was born in Oakland California and studied literature at Reed College. Some of his work can be found in Adbusters, Rain Taxi, Opium, Wilderness House, andNewfound. When not reading or writing he works on a farm.

Michael J. Wilson lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts and writes reviews for Publisher’s Weekly. As these don’t pay the bills, he also works for a coffee roaster. His most recent publications are in Ping Pong,Spittoon and KNACK.

Vicki Wilson’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Family Circle, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Writer’s Digest, Anderbo, The Southampton Review and more. She is a freelance writer and lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

Michael Wolfe was given a signed German translation of Jesus’ Son that he can’t read. He co-founded Front Porch (www.frontporchjournal.com) and his writing and interviews have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Phoebe, American Book Review and elsewhere. He lives in L.A.

Sophia Hyland-Wolzak is an American expat that lives and works in Adelaide, Australia. She is currently a contributing writer and editor for a national caravanning and camping travel magazine, G’DAY Magazine.

Joe Worthen is a graduate candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His fiction can be found in Straight Teeth Zine and Menu 971.

Bill Yarrow is the author of Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012). He has been published in many print and online journals including Thrush, DIAGRAM, Contrary, and RHINO. He is a Professor of English at Joliet Junior College where he teaches creative writing, Shakespeare, and film. Two chapbooks (Twenty from MadHat Press and Incompetent Translations and Inept Haiku from Červená Barva Press) are forthcoming in 2013.

Angel Zapata is the recipient of the 2012 Mariner Award for Bewildering Stories’ most outstanding flash fiction work of the year, “Carrion Folk.” His first poetry chapbook collection, “An Offering of Ink and Feathers,” was just published. Visit him at arageofangel.blogspot.com.

STAFF CONTRIBUTORS

Rachel Anne Bondurant is a freelance writer & editor in Austin. She reads and writes YA, makes inappropriate jokes, and talks to herself slightly more than sometimes. You can find her online here (professionally), here (recreationally), here (visually), or here (sporadically).

Laura Casteel is the current managing editor of Treehouse. She is also a poet and video producer living in Durham, North Carolina. Her video work can be found here, and her writing has appeared in Postcard Poems & Prose, Thrice Fiction, and HOOT. You can follow her on Twitter @LauraCasteel and Instagram @casteel.laura, or follow her blog, Considerable Setbacks.

Joanna Imogen Davidson is a member of the North Carolina Poetry Society and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Previously a student in the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series, her poems have appeared in the anthologies Witness: Appalachia to Hatteras and Poems from the Heron Clan IV. Her website is http://www.shrikesong.com.

Jean Glaub is a poet from Raleigh, N.C. Her rhythmic story “Inverse” was published in Randall Library’s 2012 flash fiction collection, Search and Discovery. Jean rides a motorcycle year-round and has a keen interest in World War II, geology, and Russian.

Mary Grace Hammond studies poetry and psychology at UNC Wilmington.  Besides editing for Treehouse, writing, and studying, she spends her time spoiling her two dogs, singing show tunes with her pet bird, and watching really terrible horror movies.

Bella Hugo: One day, I’d like to see my name shining in the constellation of my champions–Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni, Octavia Butler…

Johannes Lichtman is the mother goose to the Treehouse gaggle. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Oxford American and Barrelhouse. Online work can be found here, here, and here.

Casey Jordan Mills is a Los Angeles-based actor and writer. He is a proud founding member of Treehouse and is currently filming a recurring role on CMT’s NASHVILLE.

Caleb Andrew Ward lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, is a reader for Treehouse magazine, Prose Editor for Atlantis Creative Magazine, and has been published here and here.

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