 Credit: Amy Anderson Victoria Lin lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and she facilitates workshops across the US. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Poetry Quarterly, Paper Nautilus, and Apeiron Review. She holds an M.A. in English literature from the University of St. Thomas and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Hamline University. Victoria is currently working toward a doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of St. Thomas, with plans to research and practice poetry therapy. Rebecca A. Spears, author of Brook the Divide (Unsolicited Press) and The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press), has her work included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, Ars Medica, and other journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, and Vermont Studio Center. She is also a recent Pushcart nominee.
 Photo Credit: Ben Krantz Terry Tierney is a writer who hails from the Midwest, but has planted roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. After serving in the Seabees, he completed his BA and MA at Binghamton University; Tierney completed a PhD in Victorian Literature at Emory University. For years, he taught college composition and creative writing courses, and survived several Silicon Valley startups as a software engineer. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Michaelyn Burnette, a Librarian from the University of California, their son, and their goofy Golden Retriever. Tierney’s work has appeared in countless publications. Lucky Ride (Unsolicited Press), an irreverent Vietnam-era road novel is set to release in 2022. More can be learned at http://terrytierney.com.
Adam Gibbs’ writing has been honored by the Tipp City Arts Council and the Hayner Cultural Center, as well as appearing in Fourth & Sycamore and The Mark Literary Review. He lives in Grove City, Ohio, with his wife Lindsay and their daughter Clara. Gibbs is the author of Dumb Luck. Catherine Moore is the author of three chapbooks and the collection ULLA! ULLA! (Main Street Rag). Her work appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Roanoke Review, Southampton Review, Appalachian Heritage, Mid-American Review and in various anthologies. She’s been awarded Walker Percy and Hambidge fellowships; her honors also include the Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, a Nashville MetroArts grant, inclusion in the juried BEST SMALL FICTIONS, as well as Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. Catherine holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and she teaches at a community college. David Michael Slater is the author of 20+ books for children, teens, and adults, several of which have received notice in the NYT, PW, the NYJB, and others. Slater’s on-going seven-part teen series, Forbidden Books, is being developed for film by Producer Kevin Bannerman (Lion King/Curious George/Ice Age). I have a six-part early chapter book series launched, and my first book of nonfiction, We're Doing It Wrong: 25 Ideas in Education That Just Don't Work -- And How to Fix Them, is out now to fabulous reviews. David Michael Slater is the author of DICTIONARIES OUT OF ORDER.
Stay in touch with Slater:
John Sullivan was an American College Theatre Festival Playwriting finalist, received the 'Jack Kerouac Literary Prize,' 'Writers Voice: New Voices of the West' Award, AZ Arts Fellowships (Poetry & Playwriting), Artists Studio Center Fellowship, WESTAF Fellowship, was a featured playwright at Denver's Changing Scene Summer Play, and an Eco-Arts Performance Fellow from Earth Matters On Stage (University of Oregon). He was Artistic / Producing Director of Theater Degree Zero, collaborated with the Bi-National Theatre Project (Instituto Tecnológico de Nogales-Sonora, Mexico / Cochise College, Douglas AZ) and directed the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed focused applied theatre wing at Seattle Public Theater. For the past decade, he has used Theatre of the Oppressed with vulnerable communities to promote dialogue on toxic exposures-cumulative risk / environmental justice issues with NIEHS environmental health scientists. He was a writer for the online journal, Community Arts Network / Art in the Public Interest and has published articles on Community-Based Participatory Research in scientific journals such as New Solutions, Environmental Health Insights and Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice & Sustainability. His work has been published in a variety of print and online journals including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Bear Review, Argy-Bargy, Prose Kitchen, California Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Oddball, OVS, Scarlet Leaf Review, Steel Toe Review, Squawk Back, Razor: a Literary Magazine, BeZine, Pudding Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Madness Muse Press, Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West, and the Houston Poetry Festival Anthology.  Raki is a queer, Jewish fiction and poetry writer. She is the author of The Memory House (The Muriel Press 2019) which was a finalist for both the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and The Other Body (Dancing Girl Press 2017). Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for fiction. She lives in Minneapolis. You can find her here: https://rakikopernik.wixsite.com/mysite and follow on Instagram @rakikopernik  Credit: Kaitlin LaMoine Martin Margaret DeRitter is the poetry editor and copy editor of Encore, a regional magazine based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was a winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Kalamazoo’s Friends of Poetry, for her chapbook Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Surprised By Joy (Wising Up Press) and Queer Around the World (Qommunicate Publishing) and in a number of journals, including The 3288 Review, which nominated her poem “At the top of Sleeping Bear Dunes” for a Pushcart Prize. DeRitter has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles. She worked for 22 years at the Kalamazoo Gazette and has taught journalism at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. She was born and raised in New Jersey and has lived in Michigan since college. When not writing or editing, she often paddles Michigan lakes and rivers. About DeRitter's Book Singing Back to the Sirens explores the many ways that desire and love, loss and grief, can shape a woman’s life. The poems in this two-part collection look at the loneliness of a newborn for her sick mother, the first stirrings of sexual desire for a best friend, the treacherous leap from a sheltered world of faith into lesbian life, the frustrations of falling for straight women, the alchemy of falling in love, the aftermath of losing it. In the first section, the poet sings back to the many women she has loved. In the second, she sings back to the one who sang the sweetest and the saddest songs.
 Chris Drabick is a former rock music journalist whose fiction has appeared in Cease, Cows, Midwestern Gothic, After the Pause and Great Lakes Review, and non-fiction in BULL and Stoneboat, among others. He is a graduate of the NEOMFA, the northeast Ohio consortial program. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Akron in Ohio.
Follow Chris Drabick:
Poet Laureate of Silver City, NM (Land of Enchantment) 2017 - 2019, Beate Sigriddaughter grew up in Nuremberg, Germany, close to the castle and World War II ruins. Her poetry and prose are published in many literary magazines, by several small presses, and have received Pushcart Prize nominations and independent prizes.
Beate Sigriddaughter is the author of Emily Kayla Jeswald is a writer based in Youngstown, Ohio. She holds an master’s in Creative Writing from Youngstown State University, and currently teaches composition.
The author of numerous published short stories as well as the novella In the Service of the Boyar (Strange Fictions Press, 2016), Jason Graff loves both reading and producing writing that has a strong, clear voice and conveys a deep connection to the characters. In high school, his passion for the written word was well and truly ignited when he took a sucker punch for writing his crush a poem. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Bowling Green State University and later, his MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. The intense nature of that program allowed him to be mentored by a diverse group of talented writers which included: Sarah Schulman, Richard Panek, Darcey Steinke, and Rachel Pollack.
Jason currently lives in Richardson, Texas with his wife, son, and their cat. He is currently working on a science fiction novel about the beginning of the end of the universe and another about a romancing con-man. You can follow him on Twitter at @JasonGraff1 , on Facebook at Author Jason Graff and/or visit his website: www.jasongraff.wordpress.com. Erin Cisney is a graduate of Franklin & Marshall College and currently resides in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. Stay connected with Erin Cisney: Tumblr: https://erincisney.tumblr.com Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10066458-erin Books By Erin Cisney Ellie White has been over-dramatic since 1986. She holds a BA in English from The Ohio State University, and an MFA from Old Dominion University. Ellie writes nonfiction and poetry. She is also the creator of the comic strip “Uterus & Ellie.” Her work has been published in Foundry, Slant, and The Columbia Review, as well as many other journals. Ellie’s first poetry chapbook, Requiem for a Doll, won the ELJ Publications Poetry Mini-Collection Contest was released in June 2015. Her second chapbook, Drift, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Fall 2019. This is her first full-length collection. Ellie’s work has won an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net nomination, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Ellie served as a poetry editor at Barely South Review for three years. She also served as a nonfiction and poetry editor for Four Ties Literary Review for two years. Ellie is currently a social media editor and reader at Muzzle Magazine. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and works full-time in the insurance industry. Connect with Ellie WhiteBest American Short Stories nominee Russell Helms has had stories in Whitefish Review, Driftwood Press, Bewildering Stories, Drunken Boat, Sand, antiTHESIS, and other journals. He holds a lectureship in English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with degrees from Auburn, Yale, and Eastern Kentucky University. His novel, Fade, is forthcoming (2019) from Unsolicited Press. His other novels and story collections are with Sij Books.
MARY PAULA HUNTER began her career as a choreographer/dancer creating works that fused movement and text. Eventually the writing won out. A transplant to New England, Hunter grew up in East Lansing, Michigan and holds a BA in English and an MFA in dance from the University of Michigan. She lives in Providence, RI with her husband, historian Richard A. Meckel.
Bill Mesce, Jr. is an author, screenwriter, and playwright living in New Jersey.
Zachary Collins is a freelance writer and high school English teacher from the south suburbs of Chicago whose students acclaim him as “not the worst, I guess”. He is an avid consumer of affordable wine, an aspiring contestant (and preferably winner) of Food Network’s Chopped, and deeply troubled by his inability to ‘pull off’ skinny jeans.
Collins and his wife recently welcomed their second daughter, a much-anticipated sister for their eldest daughter, to whom his first collection is written. He and his family currently reside in the suburbs of Chicago in home they swear they just cleaned not too long ago. Nicholas Lann is a writer, musician, scuptor, and painter living in Chicago. His poetry collection BEYOND THE GLASS FOREST is a poetic journey through a sinister alternate universe. The protagonist, a modern-day Odysseus, must navigate the dredges of the Glass Forest, in hopes of discovering happiness in the face of tragedy.
Ron Singer, b.1941, has been both a lifelong resident of New York City, and one who has traveled to, lived in, and written about the wider world. For forty-four years, Singer was a teacher and writer. Singer’s life and writing have both featured political activism. For instance, while he was in south Africa working on a book, he was invited to read poetry at a memorial for activist/poet Dennis Brutus. The book is Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press, Red Sea Press, 2015). It can be found in libraries around the world.
J. Bryan McGeever was born in Southern California and raised on Long Island. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and Newsday, with fiction in Hampton Shorts, Confrontation, and The Southampton Review. He teaches English in New York City Public Schools and lives with his family in Brooklyn.
C.M. Chapman began writing fiction in the mid 80’s as an undergrad at West Virginia University. After a 25-year hiatus during which he did creative work for WCLG Radio in Morgantown, he returned to writing in 2012. He has appeared in numerous journals, including Cheat River Review, Limestone, Still: The Journal, Unlikely Stories, Dark Mountain in the U.K., and the anthology, So It Goes: A Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. He is the author of the chapbook, Music & Blood, from Latham House Press, and is currently working on several new projects. He is a graduate of the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he has served as The McKinney Teaching Fellow and adjunct professor of English.  Ron Yates has been learning to write for most of his life. He produced good essays in high school, but his adolescent energies were largely devoted to drag racing, drinking beer, and trying to stay out of trouble.
Although encouraged by his English teachers to pursue higher education, Yates, after graduating high school in lackluster fashion, spent time languishing in factory jobs. An aching back, the remembered encouragement of former teachers, and the urgings of caring friends prompted him to explore other options. His enduring love of reading and nascent knack for writing guided him to a degree in English and a career teaching high school. He went on to earn an MA in English from the University of West Georgia and, years later, an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Yates lives near Mt. Cheaha, on the shore of beautiful Lake Wedowee in Alabama. He has published stories in a variety of journals including Wilderness House Literary Review, Hemingway Shorts, KYSO Flash, Still: the Journal, The Writing Disorder, The Oddville Press, and Prime Number Magazine. He has a son and daughter and is married to his sweetheart, Carol Yates. Megan Mary Moore is passionate about horror and poetry. She holds an MFA in poetry from Miami University. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Rogue Agent, Haunted are These Houses by Unnerving Press. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she teaches dance and talks to ghosts. This is her first collection of poetry. |