Volume 3 Contributors

Kathleen Aguero's poetry collections include Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day. Her newest collection, After That, is forthcoming from Tiger Bark Press, Oct. 2013. She has also co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press and teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Pine Manor College as well as in Changing Lives Through Literature, an alternative sentencing program for criminal offenders on probation.

Currently residing in Brooklyn, Jessica Ankeny received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2011. Her chapbook, One Simple Step to Keeping a Clean Gun, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press, and individual poems can be found in The Boiler, Metazan, and elsewhere.

Educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA), and Harvard (ABD), María Luisa Arroyo has facilitated numerous poetry workshops, including at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington DC, and the ongoing Vitamin P for Poetry Series in Springfield (MA) libraries. A speaker of 4 languages, a world traveler to over 15 countries, and a single parent, María Luisa writes narrative poems, many of which illuminate truths and interrupt the silence about lived or witnessed issues of domestic violence, child abuse, and other social injustices. Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press: 2008) is her first collection of poems. She also co-edited with the nationally renown playwright and poet Magdalena Gómez an intergenerational multicultural anthology, Bullying: Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions, and Catharsis (Skyhorse Publishing: 2012).

Elliott batTzedek holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, for which she translated Dance of the Lunatic by the Israeli Jewish lesbian writer Shez; this manuscript won the 2012 Robert Bly Translation prize, judged by Martha Collins. She is also the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Award and a residency at Vermont Studio Arts Center. She works as a program director in a small non-profit and as co-leader of Fringes, a poetry-based havurah. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the journals Armchair/Shotgun, Massachusetts Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Poemeleon, Trivia, Naugatuck River Review, Lambda Literary Online, and Sinister Wisdom, and in the anthologies Two Lines Translation Anthology and Overplay/Underdone, and as a Split This Rock poem of the week.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has published four chapbooks of poetry and once hosted a poetry slam series in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in 2008, Rich has performed all over Duke City, and his poems have appeared in The Subterranean Quarterly, The Mas Tequila Review, and The Nervous Breakdown.

Ann Bracken is a writer, poet, educator, and expressive arts consultant whose poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, Reckless Writing Anthology: Emerging Poets of the 21st CenturyLittle Patuxent Review, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire:Love Poems, Praxilla, The Museletter, and The Gunpowder Review. Her company, The Possibility Project, offers expressive arts programs for women of all ages. Ann was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize and she is a lecturer in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Maryland.

Charles Edward Brooks was born in North Carolina and took degrees at Guilford College and Duke University. Following his qualification as an actuary, he went on to do a doctorate at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. For some years his work involved international travel and communication in a number of languages.

In addition to translations, his literary output includes novels, novellas, and especially short stories which have appeared in magazines such as Aim Magazine, Alembic, Art Times, Big Muddy, Black Mountain Review, The Cornish Banner, Distillery, Eureka Literary Magazine, First Intensity, Fox Cry Review, Grasslands Review, The Griffin, Hawai'i Review, The Hurricane Review, Inscape Magazine, Left Curve, The Licking River Review, Lynx Eye, The MacGuffin, Main Street Rag, Medicinal Purposes, North Dakota Quarterly, Orange Willow Review, Owen Wister Review, Pacific Review, Pangolin Papers, Parting Gifts, Progenitor, RE:AL, The Remnant, RiverSedge, Sanskrit, Snake Nation Review, The South Carolina Review, Steam Ticket, Studio One, Wellspring, Westview, and Xavier Review. He now lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

He has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize for his stories, "Cho Cho San," "The Doomsters," "A Book You'll Want to Read," "A Spark Remains," and "Through The Gate."

Charlie Brown is a writer and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. He is currently pursuing a Master’s of Professional Writing at the University of Southern California. He has published short stories in Aethlon and what??, and has made two feature films.

Charlene Logan Burnett's work has appeared in A cappella Zoo, Literary Mama, RHINO, Weave Magazine, and other journals. She earned an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of California, Davis.

Mary Lou Buschi's poems have appeared or are appearing in Willow Springs, Four Way Review, The Laurel Review, Indiana Review, Cream City Review, PANK, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. Mary Lou has received fellowships from The Santa Fe Writer's Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and The New York City Teaching Fellows. Currently, she is a special education teacher in the Bronx and an adjunct writing instructor for the Paul McGhee Division of New York University. Mary Lou is also a mentor for new teachers through the Teaching Resident program at Teacher's College, Columbia University. She earned an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College Masters Program for Writers and a Masters of Science in Urban Education from Mercy College.

Lanette Cadle is an Associate Professor of English at Missouri State University, where she is also an editor for Moon City Press. She has previously published poetry in Connecticut Review and Crab Orchard Review.

Alana I. Capria (born 1985) is the author of Hooks and Slaughterhouse. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Capria resides in Northern New Jersey with her husband and rabbit. Her website is alanaicapria.com.

Bob Carlton lives and works in Garland, TX.

Sara Biggs Chaney is a writing teacher from Vermont. She teaches writing at Dartmouth College. Her poetry has recently appeared or will appear in Stone Highway Review, The Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Rufous City Review, Corium Magazine, and elsewhere. You can catch up with Sara at sarabiggschaney.blogspot.com.

Chloe N. Clark is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment. Her work has appeared in such places Rosebud, Fractured West, Supernatural Tales, and Prick of the Spindle. She likes stage magicians, cookies, and Joss Whedon; she rants about all three on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes.

Robert Cole is Fiction Editor of Cease, Cows and Black Heart Magazine. Robert is among the 2013 Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Competition winners, and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Sein und Werden, Erbacce, Willows Wept Review, THIS Literary Magazine, Thirteen Myna Birds, and GlassFire. A chapbook by Robert and Juliet Cook will be published next year by Hyacinth Girl Press.

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, LUSTRE, and Tarpaulin Sky Press. She is a multiple time Pushcart Prize Nominee and has had a poem selected for inclusion in Sundress Publications' Best of the Net. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press), Tongue Like a Stinger (Wheelhouse), POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press), and POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press). A new collaborative poetry chapbook created by Juliet Cook and Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Juliet's first full-length poetry book, "Horrific Confection", was published by BlazeVOX. In addition to her own writing, Juliet is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Jessica Cory earned her B.A. from Ohio University and her M.A. in English with a Creative Writing concentration from East Carolina University. She currently lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina and is working on becoming a crazy cat lady. Her work has appeared in A Poetry Congeries, WTF: What the Fiction, and Emerge, among other publications.

Ree Davis' work has appeared in Narrative Magazine and Daedalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among others. Writing awards she has received include New Millennium Writings 34th Consecutive Awards (Honorable Mention) and Narrative Magazine Short Fiction Competition (First Place). Her story, "A Terrible Energy," was ranked Top 25 in Glimmer Train's June 2012 Fiction Open. She studied with Russell Banks, George Saunders, Charles D'Ambrosio, and other noted writers, and has attended workshops including the Zoetrope Writers Workshop, Under the Volcano Writers Workshop, and the Tinker Mountain Writers' Retreat in 2009 and 2012.

Darren C. Demaree's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including The South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Grist, and Whiskey Island.

He is the author of "As We Refer To Our Bodies" (2013, 8th House), "Temporary Champions" (2014, Main Street Rag), and "Not For Art Nor Prayer" (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination.

He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Elizabeth Evenson-Dencklau is an author of fiction and poetry. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her work has appeared in The Metropolitan.

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He's the author of several novels, including The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing "something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people." Dodds' screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha.

Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. She earned an MLIS from San Jose State University and an MFA from Mills College. At present, she’s building and curating an open access chapbook exchange and virtual archive for the Poetry Center at SF State. Her chapbook huminsect is just out from dancing girl press. Some recent poems and prose can be found in Sprung Formal, Conversations at a Wartime Cafe, and MiPOesias, as well as online in Octopus Magazine, Otoliths, There, Shampoo, Peacock Online Review, and Secret Mint. She blogs at apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com, and lives in Berkeley with her family.

Kallie Falandays has poems that appear or will appear in PANK, Paper Darts, ILK, The Dirty Napkin, Zymbol, Letterbox, Deluge, and The Scrambler.

Lane Falcon's poems are published or forthcoming in Rhino, PANK, Word Riot, 2 River View, and more. In 2012, she was awarded the Rona Jaffe Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.

As a native of Phoenix, AZ, Kristin Forbes-Mullane grew up with an obsession for anything having to do with art. At a young age she began painting and drawing every chance she got. This love of art came from her father, who as an artist and graphic designer himself has always inspired her.

Without any formal training in art, hating high school enough to know there'd be no way she'd survive the structure and rules of college, she has managed to learn about art by studying on her own. She has found herself being drawn to anything with a dark, sad feeling. Her love for all things sinister portrays itself in her art as religious icons, old family photos and figures, twisted into something dark, no longer serene and beautiful. This transition from light to dark allows the viewer to create their own story… "That little girl looks so innocent, but she might bite you when you aren't looking."

Lynsey G. is a scribbler—of poems, fiction, blogs, advice columns, and even journalism. She is currently at work on a graphic novel, contributing biweekly to Luna Luna Magazine, and blogging at her website when not binge-watching sci-fi on Netflix or battling the New York City subway system.

Photo by Sasha

Stuart Gibbel lives in Brooklyn, NY. A previous story of his appeared In Search of a City: LA in 1,000 Words. He is currently working on a novel called Research, about the minor differences between working for an Internet start-up and joining a cult.

Lauren Gordon is the Pushcart Prize nominated author of "Meaningful Fingers" (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and "Keen" (horse less press, 2014). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming with: Sugar House Review, burntdistrict, [PANK], Coldfront Magazine, Rain Taxi, Right Hand Pointing, and Poetry Crush. Lauren received her MFA in Poetry from New England College and she is currently a Contributing Editor to Radius Lit. She lives outside of Milwaukee with her husband and daughter.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Vallum, and the science fiction anthology, "The Kennedy Curse," with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Pennsylvania English, and the Oyez Review.

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick received her Master of Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the resident poet for Port Yonder Press' online magazine Beyondaries and has a chapbook, Hummingbird Mind, in print from Mouthfeel Press. She has been nominated for a Best New Poets and her work has been featured or is upcoming in Night Train, Versal, Sugar House Review, and Four Way Review, among others. She writes in the deserts of West Texas.

Wei He grew up in Inner Mongolia, China, and now lives in Pittsburgh, PA. She holds an MA degree in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio and is currently enrolled in the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. Her English short stories have been published in Spry Literary Journal and Parable Press, and her Chinese stories, poems and essays have appeared in Under The Banyan (a Chinese online literary journal), Youth (an in-print literary magazine in Nanjing, China), Prose (an in-print literary magazine in Hubei, China), and Youth Literary (a Taiwanese literary journal).

Jeff Hecker

Fall 2013: "Poems are never finite:" Poet-on-Poet Interview Jeff Hecker and Laura Madeline Wiseman

Jeffrey Hecker was born in 1977 in Norfolk, Virginia. He's the author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011), the chapbook Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), & the forthcoming chapbook Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013) Recent work has appeared in La Reata Review, Mascara Literary Review, Atticus Review, La Fovea, Zocalo Public Square, The Burning Bush 2, LEVELER, Spittoon, and similar:peaks. He holds a degree from Old Dominion University. He's a staff book reviewer for Fjords Review. He resides with his wife Robin in Olde Towne Portsmouth, Virginia

Gabe Herron

Fall 2013: Art Scene: The Great Maximilian vs. Musca Domestica

Gabe Herron lives outside a small town near Portland, Oregon with his wife and son. His stories have been published in The MacGuffin and Hobart (web). His poetry has appeared in the Green Hills Literary Lantern. He has worked at the same bookstore for eleven years.

Amorak Huey

Spring 2012: Four Poems
Winter 2013: "They Wouldn't Be Poems If I Didn't Make Them": A Conversation with Laura Madeline Wiseman
Summer 2013: Four Poems

Amorak Huey, a longtime newspaper editor and reporter, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His chapbook, The Insomniac Circus, is forthcoming in 2014 from Hyacinth Girl Press, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Southern Review, Revolution House, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.

Rich Ives

Summer 2013: Three Poems

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Dublin Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily, and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from The Bitter Oleander. In 2011, he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 at silencedpress.com.

W. Todd Kaneko

Fall 2013: Three Poems

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor, forthcoming 2014). His poems and prose have appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Barrelhouse, The Normal School, The Collagist, and many other places. He has received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. He teaches at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Visit him online: www.toddkaneko.com.

Etgar Keret

Summer 2013: A Foreign Language

Etgar Keret is an Israeli author of six bestselling story collections. His writing has been published in Harper's Magazine, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope. Jellyfish, his first movie as a director along with his wife, Shira Geffen, won the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes in 2007.

Kathleen Kirk

Summer 2012: Four Poems
Spring 2014: Six Poems

Kathleen Kirk is the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Nocturnes (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012) and Interior Sculpture (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her work has appeared previously in Menacing Hedge, Summer 2012, and also in a number of other cool print and online journals, including Arsenic Lobster, Fifth Wednesday, Poetry East, and the museum of americana. She is the poetry editor for Escape Into Life. These poems come from a set in the voice of sculptor Camille Claudel, commissioned by Columbus Dance Theatre for Claudel, a dance/music/theatre/poetry collaboration, performed January 24-25, 2014.

Anna Kovatcheva

Winter 2014: Three Poems

Anna Kovatcheva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and grew up in central Virginia. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at New York University. Her work has previously appeared in The Kenyon Review and Used Furniture Review.

Kristin LaTour

Spring 2014: Six Poems

Kristin LaTour's most recent chapbook is Agoraphobia, from Dancing Girl Press (2013). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press, and Atticus Review. She appears in the anthology Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century. She teaches at Joliet Jr. College and lives in Aurora, IL with her writer husband, a lovebird, and two dogitos. Readers can find more information at www.kristinlatour.com.

William Lemon

Spring 2014: Ember Against Gravity

William Lemon received his M.A. in Literature and Writing at California State University San Marcos, then began teaching English at Santa Monica College and Irvine Valley College. He has been published at BlazeVox, Bartleby Snopes, Drunk Monkeys, and Paragraph Line.

Jessica Leonard

Spring 2014: Lessons From My Mother

Jessica Leonard is the writer of stories about people and the things they do. Most days you can find her looking skeptically at her surroundings and being negative, but in a charming way. Her work has appeared in Counterexample Poetics as well as in the Solarcide anthologies Nova Parade and Flash Me: The Sinthology.

Peter Tieryas Liu

Summer 2013: Rodenticide

Peter Tieryas Liu has work published or forthcoming in The Collagist, Evergreen Review, Indiana Review, New Letters, and ZYZZYVA. His collection of short stories, Watering Heaven, was recently long-listed for the pending Frank O'Connor Int'l Short Story Award. You can follow him at tieryas.wordpress.com.

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

Fall 2013: Two Poems

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens has poems published in Superstition Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Red Savina Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Burningwood Literary Journal, The Apeiron Review, Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag, Star 82 Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, Rufous City Review, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Untitled with Passengers, Gravel Magazine, and Iowa City's 2013 Poetry in Public Project. She has poems forthcoming in Eunoia Review, The New Poet, Scapegoat Review, and Sein und Werde.

Liz Martin

Spring 2014: Two Poems

Liz Martin moonlights as a post-modern, feminist housewife, quilting, knitting, and gardening to fill up the moments when she is not in danger of being buried under a landslide of freshman composition essays or reading poetry for Map Literary, a journal of contemporary writing and art. Her poetry has been published in Arsenic Lobster, and is forthcoming from Eunoia Review.

Carlo Matos

Fall 2013: Three Poems

Carlo Matos is an Azorean-American writer. He has published four books: A School for Fishermen (BrickHouse Books), Counting Sheep Till Doomsday (BlazeVOX), Ibsen's Foreign Contagion (Academica Press), and Big Bad Asterisk* (BlazeVOX). He has also published poems and stories in The Conium Review, Saudade Review, Atticus Review, Paper Darts, and Arsenic Lobster, among others. He currently lives in Chicago, IL where he teaches English at the City Colleges of Chicago by day and is a cage fighter by night. After hours he can be found entertaining clients at the one and only Chicago Poetry Bordello.

Jenean McBrearty

Spring 2014: The Zen of Detachable Brains

Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, and former community college instructor (Political Science and Sociology). She received the EKU English Department's Award for Graduate Non-fiction (2011), and her fiction, photographs, and poetry have been published in e-publications, and in print, most recently in the Moon, and Page & Sine Magazine. Her mystery novel, "The 9th Circle," was published by Barbarian Books, and her YA novels "Rapahel Redcloak" and "Retrolands" are serialized at Juke Pop.

Caitlin Levison McGuire

Winter 2014: If You Want To Destroy My Sweater

Caitlin McGuire is a founding editor at Cartagena Journal and online content editor at Fjords Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Harpur Palate, Hobart, and Passages North, among others, and will be the writer-in-residence at Balkankult and Zvona i Nari this spring. You can find her at caitlinmcguire.tumblr.com.

Mark McKee

Winter 2014: Baby Talk

Mark McKee Jr. is from Dyersburg, TN. This causes him to think strange thoughts. When he thinks strange thoughts, they sometimes find their way into publications like Thaumatrope, Space Squid, and most recently, Menacing Hedge.

Gregg Murray

Spring 2014: Four-Part Poem

Gregg Murray is Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College. He has recent poems in DIAGRAM, Caketrain, Josephine Quarterly, [PANK], and elsewhere, as well as ones forthcoming from Berkeley Poetry Review and Phantom Drift. His chapbook "Ceviche" will soon be available (Spittoon Press 2014). Please visit his website for more information, including links to published poems, essays, reviews, and scholarship (gregorykirkmurray.com). 

Kristine Ong Muslim

Winter 2014: Four Poems

Kristine Ong Muslim is the author of We Bury the Landscape (Queen's Ferry Press, 2012) and Grim Series (Popcorn Press, 2012). Her stories and poems appeared in many places, the likes of Hobart, Sou'wester, Southword, The State, and Verse Daily. Her online home is kristinemuslim.weebly.com.

Dennis Must

Summer 2013: Lucky Stone

Dennis Must is the author of two short story collections: OH, DON'T ASK WHY, Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, CA (2007), and BANJO GREASE, Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, CA (2000), plus a novel, THE WORLD'S SMALLEST BIBLE, to be published by Red Hen Press in spring 2014. His plays have been performed Off-Off Broadway, and his fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary reviews. He resides with his wife in Salem, Massachusetts.

H. L. Nelson

Winter 2014: A War With No Backbone

H. L. Nelson is head of Cease, Cows lit mag and a former sidewalk mannequin. (Yes, that happened.) Pub credits: PANK, Hobart, Connotation Press, Metazen, Writer's Digest, Drunk Monkeys, Red Fez, Bartleby Snopes, etc. She's working on an anthology, including stories by Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, Lindsay Hunter, etc. h. l.'s MFA is kicking her ass. hlnelson.com.

Nicole Olweean

Winter 2014: Five Poems

Nicole Olweean is a recent Grand Valley State University graduate living in Grand Rapids, MI. She received Honorable Mention in the 2013 AWP Intro Journal Awards Contest, as well as nomination for the 2013 Iron Horse Review Discovered Voices Awards. Her work has appeared in Fishladder.

Nicole Oquendo

Spring 2014: Two Poems

Nicole Oquendo is a writer, teacher, and visual artist from South Florida. Her most recently published essays and poetry have appeared in DIAGRAM, fillingStation, Storm Cellar, and Truck. She also serves as an Assistant Editor for Sundress Publications.

Michael Pagán

Winter 2014: Three Poems

A brief biography: Born and raised in Miami, FL, Michael J Pagán spent four years (1999-2003) in the United States Navy before (hastily) running back to college during the spring of 2004. He currently resides in Deerfield Beach, FL with his wife and daughter where he continues to work on his poetry, short fiction, and his first stage play. He is a contributor to his alma mater's blog, The MFA at FAU, as well as his own, The Elevator Room Company.

A graduate of Florida Atlantic University's Creative Writing MFA program, his poetry, fiction, non-fiction and drama have appeared or us forthcoming in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Pacifica Literary Review, Spork Press, Requited, Verse, Caliban Online, The Nervous Breakdown, The Coachella Review, BlazeVOX, Spittoon Magazine, and Mad Hatters' Review, among others.

Ken Poyner

Fall 2011: The Corruption of the Orikind Penning
Summer 2012: The Sympathetic Exchange
Winter 2014: Three Poems

Ken Poyner lives in the lower right hand corner of Virginia, with his powerlifter wife and a number of house animals. His 2013 e-book, "Constant Animals", 42 brief but unruly fictions, is available at all the various e-book sites, and you should go buy it so he does not have to haunt you. Recent work is out in Corium, Analog Science Fiction, Spittoon, Poet Lore, Mobius, and many other places.

Carson Pynes

Fall 2013: Three Poems

Carson Pynes was raised in a small town high in the mountains of northern Arizona. When she isn't reading or writing, she can be found wandering. She currently resides in Galway, Ireland, near the River Corrib. This is her first published work.

Daniel M. Shapiro

Fall 2011: Diagrams from Groove: Instructions for Machines
Summer 2012: Five Poems
Spring 2014: Four Poems

Daniel M. Shapiro is a special education teacher who lives in Pittsburgh. His new book, How the Potato Chip Was Invented, is available from sunnyoutside press.

Mike Shier

Spring 2014: Two Poems

Mike Shier holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and is currently enrolled in the PhD program at Illinois State University for the same. He typically writes essays, but a move from the tropical south to Central Illinois for his first winter ever has left him writing poems.

Sarah J. Sloat

Spring 2012: Three Poems
Fall 2013: Three Poems

Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey. For many years she's lived in Germany, where she works in Weltschmerz. Sarah's poems have appeared in Bateau, Harper's Ferry Review, and Court Green. She has published two chapbooks with Dancing Girl Press, "Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair," and "Inksuite." Another chapbook, "Homebodies," is available from Hyacinth Girl Press.

Gary Sloboda

Winter 2014: Six Poems

Gary Sloboda is a lawyer, writer and musician, but not necessarily in that order. His writing has appeared in a variety of venues and is forthcoming in Blackbox Manifold and Nerve Lantern. He's currently writing a collection of prose poems entitled "Tremor Philosophies." He lives in San Francisco.

James Stolen

Spring 2014: The Architect

James Stolen is a recent graduate from the MFA program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Shenandoah, Sierra Nevada Review, High Desert Journal, and Ghost Town, among others. He currently lives in Oregon and is working on a series of short stories and a novel.

Gayle Towell

Spring 2014: Endless Ice

Gayle Towell is a writer, drummer, and physics instructor from North Plains, Oregon. Her short story "Paper" is slated to be in the Burnt Tongues anthology edited by author Chuck Palahniuk due out by Medallion Press in August of 2014.

Rachel Van Blankenship

Winter 2012: Four Poems
Spring 2014: Six Poems

Rachel Van Blankenship is a poet/photographer/designer raised in Northern California. She studied Photojournalism and Creative Writing at The University of Montana, Missoula and has recently relocated to Phoenix, Arizona to daylight as a Features Designer. Her nomadic tendencies have taken her to Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. Menacing Hedge, Gather Kindling, JMWW, and Cease, Cows have published her poems, and she recently placed 4th in the international 'Flash Mob 2013' competition. She is *cough* still working on her first viable poetry manuscript (she knows she's slow). Visit her website and blog at www.rachelvb.com.

David Vardeman

Summer 2013: Atlantis Needs Victims

David Vardeman is a native of Iowa and a graduate of Indiana University Southeast and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His one-act play plays have been staged by New England Academy of Theatre, Bellarmine College, Acorn Theatre's Maine Playwrights' Festival, Mad Lab Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, and the Theater Company of Lafayette, Colorado. His full-length play "Because It is Bitter, and Because It is My Heart" was one of six finalists at the Palm Springs International Playwriting Festival in 2004 and received a staged reading. His short fiction has appeared in Crack the Spine, Glint Literary Journal, Life As An [insert label here], Little Patuxent Review, and is forthcoming in The Writing Disorder. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Madeline von Foerster

Summer 2013: Ebony Cabinet

"Madeline von Foerster is a very gifted and highly original artist, who brings new imagery and a novel approach to conservation – which we need." - Edward O. Wilson

To create her unusual paintings, Madeline von Foerster uses a five century-old mixed technique of oil and egg tempera, developed by the Flemish Renaissance Masters. Although linked stylistically to the past, her paintings are passionately relevant to the present, as such timely themes as deforestation, endangered species, and war find expression in her work.

Von Foerster's artworks are in collections around the world and have been featured in numerous publications, including a recent cover feature for Orion Magazine. She was named as one of the "Top Contemporary Surrealists" by Art and Antiques magazine. Born in San Francisco, von Foerster studied art in California, Germany and Austria, and currently resides in New York City. Website: www.madelinevonfoerster.com

Katherine Vondy

Winter 2014: Skyping with Oprah

Katherine Vondy is an LA-based writer and filmmaker. Her award-winning short film, "The Broken Heart of Gnocchi Bolognese," has played at festivals worldwide and is distributed by Shorts International and PlayFestivalFilms. A 2009 resident writer at Wildacres, a 2012 resident artist at Starry Night and a 2013 resident writer at the Vermont Studio Center, her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Beloit Fiction Journal, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Oklahoma Review, Breakwater Review, Burningword Literary Journal, and Spilt Infinitive. Katherine is one of six writers selected to participate in collaborative arts project Flying House 2013, and her blog of comedic mini-essays can be found at thewalkingdeadpan.tumblr.com.

Seann F. Weir

Spring 2014: Three Poems

Seann F. Weir is a poet and undergraduate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he studies English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. He has work forthcoming in the inaugural issue of the Bear Review.

Riley Welcker

Fall 2013: Silent

Riley H. Welcker has many stories, essays, and poems bulging from his briefcase. He holds a B.S. in Business, a B.A. in English, and is currently an M.F.A. student at the University of Texas at El Paso. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the Oklahoma Review, The Montreal Review, The Mindful Word, Mandala Journal, Whispering Prairie Press, the Taj Mahal Review, Syndic Literary Journal, and Passages North.

Dawn Wilson

Fall 2013: Population Explosion

A graduate of Bath Spa University in England, Dawn Wilson has had the pleasure to dabble in kitsch, surrealism, and espièglerie. Her work can be found in Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Gone Lawn, Paper Darts Magazine, Metazen, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Drunk Monkeys, and Punchnel's, among others, while the author herself can be found dismantling the kitchen for wearable items, or at nightdawn.wordpress.com. She is at work on a madcap novel.

Laura Madeline Wiseman

Fall 2012: Two Poems
Winter 2013: "They Wouldn't Be Poems If I Didn't Make Them": A Conversation with Laura Madeline Wiseman
Summer 2013: On Poetry and Transformation: A Conversation with Four Poets from Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence
Summer 2013: "Women, you have got to want to live": A Review of Susan Yount's Catastrophe Theory
Fall 2013: "Poems are never finite:" Poet-on-Poet Interview Jeff Hecker and Laura Madeline Wiseman

Laura Madeline Wiseman has a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches English. She is the author of several chapbooks including She who Loves Her Father (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Her chapbook, First Wife, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2013. She is also the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Blue Light Press, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in Margie, Feminist Studies, Poet Lore, Cream City Review, Pebble Lake Review, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in Arts & Letters, Spittoon, Blackbird, American Short Fiction, 13th Moon, and elsewhere. Her reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso Poetry Review, 42Opus, and elsewhere. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

Susan Yount

Fall 2012: Four Poems
Summer 2013: Review

Susan Yount is editor and publisher of the Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal and madam of the Chicago Poetry Bordello. She founded Misty Publications, and their first full length collection is Steve Davenport's OVERPASS, which is scheduled to debut in August 2012. She also works full time at the Associated Press and teaches online poetry classes at The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative. As if all that wasn't enough, she recently completed her MFA in poetry at Columbia College Chicago, and is mother to the most darling little boy of 5. Her chapbook, Catastrophe Theory, is just out from Hyacinth Girl Press.

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