Contributor Bios

Hybrid

Ashely Adams has an MA in English from Northern Michigan University and a BS in Fisheries and Wildlife from Michigan State University. While at NMU, she worked as an associate editor for fiction and non-fiction for the university’s literary journal, Passages North. She has been previously published in Rum Punch Press, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Flyway with forthcoming work in Anthropoid.

Matthew Burnside is the author of five chapbooks and has created several digital projects which have garnered attention from sites like The Millions and The Rumpus. His stories, poems, and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2015, DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, PANK, Hobart, kill author, Pear Noir!, Gargoyle, NAP, OmniVerse, and more. He is co-founder of an experimental literary magazine called Cloud Rodeo, managing editor of Mixed Fruit, and has been a reader for PANK, The Iowa Review, and NPR’s 3 Minute Fiction. In addition, he writes a monthly blog column on storytelling and intersections between new media and literature for Ploughshares and serves as Interviews editor for BOAAT press. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Linda Davis won the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction contest and her story “The War at Home’ appears in their January/February 2014 issue. She was the runner-up in Flyway’s Notes from the Field Contest, judged by Rick Bass, and her work was published in their March 2014 issue. Her essay “This House’ is included in the anthology Morning Coffee and Other Stories: Mothering Children with Special Needs and her story “My Boyfriend is a Senator’ was just released in Perception: A New Adult Anthology from Elephantine Press. Other publications include The Literary Review and Gemini Magazine. She worked with Antonya Nelson at Bread Loaf and Brad Kessler at Antioch University where she received her MFA.

D.G. Geis lives in Houston, Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Fjords, Memoryhouse, 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review, The Broadkill Review, A Quiet Courage, SoftBlow International Poetry Journal, Blinders, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Scotland (Open Mouse), Crosswinds, Scarlet Leaf, Sweet Tree, Atrocity Exhibition, Driftwood Press, Tamsen, Rat’s Ass, Bad Acid, Crack the Spine, Collapsar, Grub Street, Slippery Elm, Ricochet, The Write Place at the Write Time, Steam Ticket, Razor, Origami, Matador, Cheat River, Euphemism, Two Cities, The Hartskill Review, Sugar House, Literary Orphans, Dash, and Zabaan. He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing 9 New Poets and is the winner of Blue Bonnet Review‘s Fall 2015 Poetry Contest. He is editor-at-large of Tamsen.

Dan Gutstein is the author of non/fiction (stories) and Bloodcoal & Honey (poems). His stories and poems have appeared in more than 100 journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Best American Poetry, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He blogs at dangutstein.blogspot.com.

Micah Dean Hicks has been published in places like New Letters, Indiana Review, and New Orleans Review. His short story collection, Electricity and Other Dreams, was recently published by New American Press. He teaches creative writing at Arkansas Tech University.

Priscilla Kinter is five and a half nanoseconds long and shows significant foraminal stenosis between L2 and L3. She once owned a pet squirrel, but dislikes writing bios, and has requested that others complete this task on her behalf. “Significant spatial displacement and occasional vocalizations give subject the appearance of life.’ “Fruit forward flavors of strawberry and raspberry greet the palate, followed by a soft, lingering finish.’ “Once owned the New York Mets.’ “Drives men wild.’ Please direct all corrections to Priscilla Kinter’s bio to: priscillakintersbio@gmail.com.

Zach Linge is a master’s candidate in the English Graduate School at The University of Texas at San Antonio, where his research foci include gender and identity; queer and affect theory; witchcraft history; the modern and contemporary novel; and modern and contemporary poetry. Previous publications include poetry in Nimrod International Journal and Hothouse Literary Journal; art and photography in The Shinnery Review; and a critical contribution on Serbian-American poet Charles Simic in a forthcoming anthology on American literature.

Brenda Peynado has work appearing in The Threepenny Review, EPOCH, Mid-American Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Her writing has won awards from the Glimmer Train Fiction Open Contest, Nelson Algren Award, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Currently, she is a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati.

C.J. Spataro is the MFA program director at Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia and the editorial director of Philadelphia Stories and PS Books. She is a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant winner for fiction and her short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals including The Baltimore Review, XConnect, Mason’s Road, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Her work has also been anthologized in Another Breath, Forgotten Philadelphia, Extraordinary Gifts, and 50 Over 50.

Kelly Lynn Thomas reads, writes, and sometimes sews in Pittsburgh, PA. Her creative work has appeared in Sou’wester, Thin Air Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and others, and was a finalist in the December 2015 Glimmer Train Fiction Open. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, is hopelessly obsessed with Star Wars, and can always be found with a large mug of tea. She also runs the very small Wild Age Press and blogs for The Rumpus. Read more at kellylynnthomas.com.

Amy Jo Trier-Walker lives and works on a tree and herb farm in Indiana, and she is the author of Trembling Ourselves into Trees (Horse Less Press, 2015).  Recent work can also be found in New American Writing, Caliban, Ghost Ocean, Tinderbox Poetry Review, and inter|rupture, among others, and she is the Poetry and Art Editor at Black Tongue Review.

José Vadi is an award-winning writer, performer and film producer based in Oakland, California. A two-time national slam poetry champion and recipient of  the Shenson Performing Arts Award, José was the inaugural director of the Off/Page Project, a collaboration between Youth Speaks and The Center for Investigative Reporting, that incorporated investigative journalism and poets’ original work into short films, documentaries and live performances. His work has been featured by the PBS NewsHour, the San Francisco Chronicle, Mashable and The Daily Beast while his writing has most recently appeared in Colorlines, Bodega Mag, Public Pool, the Berkeley Poetry Review, HOLD: a journal and Catapult.

Barrett Warner is the author of Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? (Somondoco, 2016) and My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius, 2014).

 

Fiction

Sammi LaBue is a fiction writer based out of Brooklyn, NY. Some of her other fiction can be found in [PANK] Magazine, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Referential Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently working toward an MFA in fiction writing with the Vermont College of Fine Arts and leads a writing workshop for the blind through the New York Writers’ Coalition.

George Looney’s recent books include Meditations Before the Windows Fail (Lost Horse Press, 2015), Structures the Wind Sings Through (a book-length poem from Full/Crescent Press, 2014), Monks Beginning to Waltz (Truman State University Press, 2012), and A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011). He founded the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Penn State Erie and serves as editor-in-chief of the international literary journal Lake Effect, translation editor of Mid-American Review, and he is the co-founder of the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival.

Jim Meirose’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Blueline, Ohio Edit, Bartleby Snopes, Innovate, The Fiddlehead, Witness, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Xavier Review, and has been nominated for several awards. Two collections of his short work have been published, and a novel, Mount Everest, was released in 2015 by Montag Press. Another novel, Eli the Rat, has just been released by Montag as well. Three more novels are under contract with Montag for 2016-2017 release; these are previously published novels which have gone out of print from other houses. More information is available at www.jimmeirose.com.

Harmony Neal is a witch, not a druid. She was the 2011-2013 Fiction Fellow at Emory University. Her essays and stories have been published or are forthcoming in Black Static, The Tayen Lane Articulated Press Anthology, Eleven Eleven, Psychopomp, Nashville Review, Paper Darts, storySouth, and The Toast, among others. Her essay “Simulacra’ is included in the 2015 Best of the Net Anthology.

Caleb Tankersley’s work appears in CutBank, Gargoyle, Storm Cellar, and others. His chapbook Jesus Works the Night Shift was published in 2014 by Urban Farmhouse Press. He recently received a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers, where he served as Associate Editor for Mississippi Review.

 

Poetry

Stephen Behrendt is George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. An authority on the literature and culture of British Romanticism, he is also a widely published poet. His fourth collection, Refractions, was published by Shechem Press in Fall 2014.

Colleen Burner is a Midwestern-raised writer and artist, co-editor of Shirley Magazine, and Oregon Literary Women Writer’s Fellowship recipient. Her work has appeared in Quaint Magazine.

Mary Leauna Christensen is a writer who focuses on the liminal and what it means to reside in various borderlands, and the strangeness that seems to bring. She has lived in Southwest deserts, in kudzu infested Appalachia, and currently lives in the forever wet Pacific Northwest with an overly dramatic cat. She is also an MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University.

Noah Davis has published work with Poet Lore, Natural Bridge, The Fourth River, and Chiron Review among others. In 2015 Davis received Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry from both Poet Lore and Natural Bridge. When not confined to his dorm room at Seton Hill University he spends his time on the mountains and streams of his Central Pennsylvania home.

Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in numerous magazines/journals, including South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and Colorado Review.  He is the author of As We Refer To Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), The Pony Governor (2015, After the Pause Press), and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.  He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Joshua Morgan Folmar is a poet, essayist, singer-songwriter, and Marine combat veteran.  An Alabama native, Joshua received his MFA in Poetry from the University of New Hampshire where he was awarded the Young P. Dawkins III Endowed Prize in Creative Writing for his thesis Here We Rest. Joshua is the 2014 recipient of the Richard “Dick’ Shea Memorial Award in Poetry, and he has been published in Marr’s Field Journal, DewPoint Literary Magazine, Mark My Words, and the anthology Liver of Dixie: Stories from Egan’s, among others. He resides with his wife and cat in Dover, New Hampshire.

Sarah Giragosian’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as  Prairie Schooner, Ecotone, Denver Quarterly, and Nimrod, among others. A winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize, her first book Queer Fish is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. She teaches in the department of Writing and Critical Inquiry at the University at Albany-SUNY.

Kirk Glaser’s poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Nimrod, The Threepenny Review, The Main Street Rag, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Alsop Review, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Awards for his work include an American Academy of Poets prize, C. H. Jones National Poetry Prize, University of California Poet Laureate Award, and Richard Eberhart Poetry Prize. He teaches writing and literature at Santa Clara University, where he serves as faculty advisor to the  Santa Clara Review, and is co-editor of the anthology, New California Writing 2013, Heyday.

Susan Goslee’s poem have appeared in such journals as Volt, The Southampton Review, Drunken Boat, West Branch,  Cimarron Review, Prairie Schooner, and DIAGRAM. She teaches at Idaho State University.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press). They were a finalist for Heavy Feather Review‘s Double Take Poetry Prize, judged by Dorothea Lasky, and are a 2016 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow. They have two additional chapbooks, gar child (Tree Light Books) and Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press), forthcoming in 2016. Their recent work appears or is forthcoming in Arcadia, Gigantic Sequins, Bone Bouquet, HOUSEGUEST, and elsewhere. The chapbook series editor for Sundress Publications, they live in New Orleans.

Rich Ives is the author of Light from a Small Brown Bird (Bitter Oleander Press, poetry, 2015), Sharpen (The Newer York Press, short fiction, 2015), and The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Began Leaking (What Books, short fiction 2015). A new “book of days,” titled Tunneling to the Moon, is forthcoming from Silenced Press.

Jerry  Johnston is a southern transplant living in Brooklyn, New York. His short fiction has appeared in the anthology for the Southern Literary Festival. His poems have appeared in Canteen magazine and the Arsenic Lobster 2012 Anthology.

Alyssa Jewell studies poetry at Western Michigan University where she served as  assistant editor for New Issues Poetry and Prose and is currently poetry editor for  Third Coast. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Earth Review,  Chautauqua, Cider Press Review, The Columbia Review, Fifth Wednesday, Grist,  Painted Bride Quarterly and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Grand Rapids.

Esther Lin was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and grew up in New York. A 2015 Poets House Emerging Poet and Queens Council on the Arts Fellow, she has poems published in or forthcoming in Adroit, The Cortland Review, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, Guernica, Memorious, Vinyl, and elsewhere. She teaches in the English Department at Queens College, CUNY.

Robert Malloy is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, and his poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Permafrost Magazine, The Café Review and Pinyon.

Daniel Edward Moore’s poems have been published in journals such as: American Literary Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, River Styx, Rattle, Western Humanities Review, Mid-American Review, Assaracus Review, and others.  He has poems forthcoming in Atticus Review, Wayne Literary Review, Prairie Winds Literary Journal, Straylight, Riding Light, Badlands Literary Journal, Broad Street Magazine, Common Ground Review, Glint Literary Journal, and  Compose Literary Journal.  He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island where he is working on his first book of poems. Follow Daniel at danieledwardmoore.com.

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, The Literary Review, and Verse Daily. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio(2014), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

Elizabeth Onusko is the author of Portrait of the Future with Trapdoor, which received the Bryant-Lisembee Book Prize and was published by Red Paint Hill in spring 2016. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Witness, Best New Poets 2015, Conduit, DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch, and Redivider, among others. She is the editor of Foundry and assistant editor of inter|rupture.

Leila Ortiz is a poet and social worker from Park Slope, Brooklyn. Leila’s poems have appeared in Apogee, Bodega, Cold Front, Glitter Mob, The Grief Diaries, Killing Fields Journal, No, Dear Magazine, Palabras Luminosas, Referential Magazine and Stone Canoe. Her chapbook, Girl Life, is forthcoming from Recreation League.

Dan Pinkerton lives in Urbandale, Iowa. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Green Mountains Review,Fiddleblack, Barrow Street, and CutBank.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press) and a collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS (2015). Another collection, LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT, to be published by Smokestack Books (UK), 2018. Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma(UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Main Street Rag, Fulcrum, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Pollack is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University.

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications and The Wardrobe. She is the author of two full-length collections and the editor of two anthologies, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity and Not Somewhere Else But Here: Contemporary Poems on Women and Place. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Mid-American, Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and teaches in the English Department at the University of Tennessee, where she is also the Jack E. Reese Writer in the Library.

TWIXT is the mononym-onym of Peter Specker; he has had poetry published in Margie, The Indiana Review, Amelia, California State Quarterly, RE:AL, Pegasus, First Class, Pot-pourri, Art Times, The Iconoclast, Epicenter, Subtropics, Quest, Confrontation, Writers’ Journal, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Tulane Review and others. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Audrey Walls is the author of a chapbook, Cyanosis (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her poems have recently found homes in H_NGM_N, Meridian, and Quarterly West. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she serves as poetry editor of failbetter.

Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer lives in the North East of England. Her work has appeared in, amongst other things, The American Aesthetic and The Journal and can be found at rosawallingwefelmeyer.wordpress.com.

John Sibley Williams is the editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies and the author of nine collections, including Controlled Hallucinations (2013) and Disinheritance (forthcoming 2016). A five-time Pushcart nominee and winner of the Philip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry, John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: The Midwest Quarterly, december, Third Coast, Baltimore Review, Nimrod International Journal, Hotel Amerika, Rio Grande Review, Inkwell, Cider Press Review, Bryant Literary Review, RHINO, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

Art

Brian Michael Barbeito is a resident of Ontario, Canada. He is a writer and photographer. Recent work appears at Fiction International and The Suisun Valley Review.

Michelle Brooks has published a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy (Storylandia Press), a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small (Backwaters Press). Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her favorite photographers include Diane Arbus, Joel Meyerowitz, and Robert Frank.

Graphic artist and painter Allen Forrest was born in Canada and bred in the U.S. He has created cover art and illustrations for literary publications and books. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection. Forrest’s expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.

Henry Hu is Hong Kong bred, and Sydney based. Most of Henry’s artworks are personal and intentional, with a focus on storytelling. A big fan of presenting artworks as a complete sequence / series, Henry usually creates individual collections, consisting of multiple pieces often in the same style, grouped by specific themes, concepts or stories. By utilising digital tools, a variety of styles can be seen across collections matching their subject matters. To view more of Henry’s works, visit: henryhhu.com.

A.G. Moore has many titles: writer, museum professional, sphinx. She is good at moonlight and biting her tongue. In truth she is not really a sphinx, but something less sure in its riddles. She currently lives in New Orleans.

Michael Weidman is a writer, singer/songwriter, voice actor, and video commentator. He has had poems and photos published in Eye Contact and the Loyalhanna Review. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Seton Hill University.

Kobina Wright is an American writer, artist, actress and language creator. She is known primarily for her poetry and abstract art which is constantly evolving. Wright is also the creator of the Hodaoa-Anibo language which she began to develop in 2004 and self-published “The Hodaoa-Anibo Dictionary.’ She is also known as the co-creator of nuler poetry which she helped to develop with friend and poet, Lisa Bartley Lacey.