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Contributor Bios

Laura Brun is a poet from small-town Kentucky who lives and writes in Pittsburgh. She received her BA from USC and her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Her first chapbook, “It’s Alright to Be Seen,” is available from Dancing Girl Press. Her poems are most recently found or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cosmonauts Avenue, Seneca Review, and others. You can find out more about her at  and can follow her on Instagram @laurabrrrrun.

Mary Buchinger is the author of four collections of poetry, including e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling, Aerialist (finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, OSU Press Wheeler Prize, and the Perugia Press Prize) and Navigating the Reach (forthcoming). Her work has appeared in AGNI, DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, PANK, Salamander, Slice Magazine, Boston Globe, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is president of the New England Poetry Club and professor of English and communication studies at MCPHS University in Boston. (www.marybuchinger.com)

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Navigation and 40 Weeks. A chapbook responding to events in the news, Breaking, will be published by WordTech Editions in April 2021. Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture, is forthcoming from Airlie Press in 2021. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit . 

Kelly Kiehl Davis‘s stories and poems have appeared in Santa Fe Writer’s Project Quarterly, Contrary Magazine, Psychopomp Magazine, Passages North, The Butter, decomP magazinE, and elsewhere. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and teaches high school English.

Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived and taught in before moving to Oregon. After giving up writing scholarly books that required footnotes, she reinvented herself as a fiction writer. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries, of a literary novel titled Leaving Freedom, and of The Barn, the first novel in a new mystery series.

Natasha Deonarain‘s first chapbook, 50 Etudes for Piano, will be published by Assure Press. She has most recently been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2020 by Rogue Agent Journal and won the 2020 Three Sisters Award by NELLE magazine. She has also been featured in Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize Anthology (2012) and is published in numerous online and print journals. She lives in Arizona with her husband and enjoys the rare experience of rain. 

Dante Di Stefano is the author of Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019) and Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Best American Poetry 2018, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Along with María Isabel Álvarez, he co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America (NYQ Books, 2018). He holds a PhD in English Literature from Binghamton University and is the poetry editor for the DIALOGIST.

Liza Katz Duncan is an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College and a 2017 recipient of an Amy Award from Poets and Writers. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Phoebe, Sugar House Review, the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She writes about environmental and personal catastrophe at the Jersey Shore.

A food writer, poet, and teacher, Greg Emilio has recent work appearing in Best New Poets, Gastronomica, North American Review, [PANK], The Rumpus, The Southeast Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. He earned his PhD in English from Georgia State University and lives in Atlanta.

Casey Epstein-Gross is a writer and student from Tallahassee, Florida.  Her poems have recently appeared in Thin Air Magazine, Soundings East, Up North Lit, Raw Art Review, Chaleur, and Rare Byrd Review.

Robert Evory received a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University where he acted as the Assistant Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. He is the Managing Editor and co-founder of The Poet’s Billow. He has an MFA from Syracuse University and in summer of 2019 he was an artist in residence at SERDE, a UNESCO world heritage site in Latvia. His poetry is featured or is forthcoming in: Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Salamander, Natural Bridge, Nashville Review, Wisconsin Review, Arroyo, The Madison Review, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. 

Tess Fahlgren was born and raised in rural Montana. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Joyland, Five on the Fifth, The Missoula Independent and more. She was the recipient of Blue Mesa Review’s 2020 Summer Prose Contest and Montana Quarterly’s 2016 Big Snowy Prize for Nonfiction. A graduate of the University of Montana, she is currently an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of Minnesota. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and dog and is at work on a memoir.  

Elana Lev Friedland  exists. They are the winner of Redivider’s 2020 Blurred Genre Contest and a finalist in Breakwater Review’s 2020 Peseroff Prize in poetry. Their work appears in Cartridge Lit, Anomaly, Salt Hill, The Rumpus, DIALOGIST, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Skokie, IL, they currently live. Find them online at .

Cal Freeman is the author of the book Fight Songs. His writing has appeared in many journals including Rattle, PANK, The Journal, Southwest Review, The Cortland Review, and Hippocampus. His poetry collection, Poolside at the Dearborn Inn, is forthcoming from R & R Press in 2022.

Brandi George is the author of Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and the play in verse, Faun (Plays Inverse, 2019). Her poems have recently appeared in TriQuarterly, Fence, and Orion. She teaches writing in Fort Myers, Florida.

Seth Gleckman is a fiction writer from Chula Vista, California. In May of 2020, he earned his Master’s in English and Creative Writing from Auburn University. His short stories have been published in Gulf Stream and Beyond Words. Seth is also a huge Lakers fan.

Jen Karetnick‘s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020). She is also the author of the collections Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023) and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. In addition, she is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Crossing Over (March 2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition. Karetnick won the 2020 Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry and is a 2020 Deering Estate Artist in Residence, among other prizes, grants, and fellowships. Her work appears recently or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day. Find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik and Instagram @JenKaretnick, or see jkaretnick.com.

Patrick Kindig teaches writing and American literature at Indiana University. He is the author of the chapbook all the catholic gods (Seven Kitchens Press 2019) and the micro-chapbook Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press 2016), and his poems have recently appeared in Copper Nickel, Shenandoah, Columbia Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals.

Alfredo Lafarga has fond memories of growing up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, and he is forever grateful to the Robert Louis Stevenson Branch Library for all the books. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Long Beach. Alfredo blames T.C. Boyle and his wonderful classes for making him think he can write fiction, but he thanks T.C.B. for making him immortal by using his name in “The Devil and Irv Cherniske.” Alfredo lives with his family on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County.

Tyler Wells Lynch is writer, journalist, and musician who lives in Maine. His work has been published in The Rumpus, Terraform, Porter House Review, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Sierra Magazine, and Abyss & Apex, among others.

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, professor, and painter. His multi-genre Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Book Award and many others. His new book, Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment and Social Justice, is forthcoming. Previous books include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Poetry Prize); Later on Aiaia (Grolier Poetry Prize); a Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a study of myth in poetry; and translations of books by Neruda and others. His books have been reviewed widely in publications ranging from the Huffpost to the Los Angeles Review; and his poems have appeared recently in hundreds of publications ranging from AGNI to Barrow Street to Colorado Review to Denver Quarterly to Poetry Daily to The Southern Review. Massimilla holds an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia and The New School. ( and )

Gary McDowell���&�Բ�����;Aflame won the 2019 White Pine Press Poetry Prize and is now available. He is also the author of five other books, including, most recently, Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017). His poems are forthcoming in, among others, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Cimarron Review, and The Journal. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Belmont University in Nashville.

Ashley Memory lives near the Uwharrie National Forest west of Asheboro, North Carolina with her husband, the sculptor Johnpaul Harris. When she’s not musing on a new metaphor, she’s either hollering for the dogs or learning to move earth with a skid-steer loader. Her writing has recently appeared in The Sun, The Rumpus, O. Henry, and Solstice Literary Magazine, which named her essay “Of Needles and Kindness: My Filigree Heart” a finalist in the 2020 Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Contest. In November 2019, Finishing Line Press published her first poetry collection, “Waiting for the Wood Thrush.” 

James Miller won the Connecticut Poet Award in 2020. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, The Atlanta Review, Thin Air, A Minor, Typehouse, Eclectica, Rabid Oak, pioneertown, Juked, North Dakota Quarterly, Yemassee, phoebe, Mantis, SOFTBLOW and elsewhere.

Kameron Ray Morton is an MFA candidate in fiction and translation at Columbia University.Their fiction has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, Soundings East, and Valparaiso Fiction Review, among others, and their chapbook Intersections was a finalist in Paper Nautilus’s Debut Series Chapbook Contest. They feel pressured to drink less coffee, but find their best ideas emerge from a caffeine-induced high. Find them on Instagram @tallsoyflatwhite or online at .

Claire McQuerry‘s poetry collection Lacemakers (SIU Press) won the Crab Orchard First Book Prize, and her poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, Poetry Northwest, Creative Nonfiction, American Literary Review, and other journals. She is an Assistant Professor at Bradley University. 

Monica Ong is a visual poet and the author of Silent Anatomies (2015), selected by Joy Harjo for the Kore Press First Book Award in poetry. A Kundiman fellow and graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design, Ong has been awarded residencies at the Studios at MassMoCA, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Ong’s exhibitions include New York’s Center for Book Arts and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her recent work is published in Breakwater Review (finalist, 2020 Peseroff Prize), petrichor: journal of text+image, ctrl+v, Redivider (finalist, 2020 Blurred Genres Contest), Waxwing Literary Journal, and the anthology, Poesia Visual 5, to name a few. Poetry installations from Silent Anatomies can be found in the Collection of American Literature at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Carolyn Orosz lives and writes in Northern California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Sixth Finch, Southeast Review, Foundry, Nashville Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is a poetry reader for the Adroit Journal.

Originally from Michigan, Trenton Pollard is a queer writer in Queens. His poems and essays can be found in Passages North, The Critical Flame, Bennington Review, North American Review, Foundry Journal, and elsewhere.

Melanie Sevcenko is a published poet, journalist, and radio producer currently residing in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in several literary journals, including Rise Up Review, Poetry Quarterly, Verse Daily, Black Heart Magazine, apt, The Fourth River, and more. Her poetry chapbook We Slept in Body Bags, Just in Case was published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press and her full-length collection I Still Go to Bed with Water is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She is currently the producer and editor of Live Wire, a nationally syndicated public radio show from PRX. 

Kathryn Smith is a poet and visual artist based in Spokane, WA. She is the author of the poetry collections Self-Portrait with Cephalopod, which won the Jake Adam York Prize and will be published in February 2021 by Milkweed Editions, and Book of Exodus (Scablands Books, 2017). Her chapbook Chosen Companions of the Goblin (Open Country Press, 2019) combines poetry, erasures, and embroidery in reimagining the lives of the Fox Sisters, spiritualist mediums in late 19th-century New York.

David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate and is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College. He is Co-editor and Publisher of Gunpowder Press, as well as the author of eight full-length poetry collections, most recently Dance, You Monster, to My Soft Song (FutureCycle, 2021). 

Jeff Tigchelaar’s poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, North American Review, The Offending Adam, Tar River Poetry, Natural Bridge, Redactions, and Harpur Palate, and in Verse Daily and Best New Poets. His full-length collection, Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour (Woodley Press, 2016), won the Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. His most recent jobs have been: newspaper editor, stay-at-home dad, middle school paraeducator, and, currently, library employee. He lives in Huntington, West Virginia with his wife and two children.  

Grace Wagner is a queer, neurodivergent, nonbinary poet and artist living in Houston, TX where they teach literature and creative writing at the University of Houston. They have studied with Poet Laurate Robert Pinsky, Carolyn Forche, Martha Serpas, and others. Their work can be found in The Offing, The Atlanta Review, Palette Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Salmagundi Magazine, The West Review, and elsewhere. Their artwork has been published in the Adroit Journal, and their fiction in Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine. They were recently awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Their work explores family dynamics in the Anthropocene and interrogates our connection to the ongoing mass extinction event we are all witness to. Their work centers around locating our place within the globalizing context of ongoing climate change. For more, visit .  

Richard Widerkehr’s work has appeared in Rattle, Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, Atlanta Review, and others. He won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan.  His latest book is In The Presence Of Absence (MoonPath Press).  His new book, At The Grace Cafe, is forthcoming in 2021 from Main Street Rag.  He reads poems for Shark Reef Review.

Leah White is an MFA candidate at University of Colorado Boulder. Originally from Tempe, Arizona, she currently teaches creative writing, works on Timber Journal, and runs a reading series in Boulder. This poem comes from a project about grief, in which she encases language from other poets’ work about grief inside her own.

R.S. Wynn lives in an antique house in Maine with her family and the perfect number of dogs (six, in case you were wondering). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New South, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Bacopa Literary Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere. She is the Editor of The Maine Review and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Nathaniel Youmans is a poet, editor, wildlife conservationist, sound artist, and apprentice falconer. His work has appeared in Talking River, High Desert Journal, Shouts! Music from the Rooftops, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop. He has worked in libraries, schools, teashops, mental health clinics, and museums throughout the Pacific Northwest, and has been a geological spelunking guide in Iceland. He lives in eastern Washington near the cliffs of a scabland lake. Hear more at .

Rebecca Young’s essays have appeared or are forthcoming in New Letters Magazine, Alpinist Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and many others. In 2020, Rebecca won the Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction at New Letters Magazine. Her work has been generously supported by the Jentel Foundation Artist Residency and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. She earned her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2019. She lives at 10,200 feet in Leadville, Colorado, and spends over a hundred days a year in the backcountry.