Ayesha Asad

Ayesha Asad (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Waveborne (Bottlecap Press, 2022). Her poetry has been included in the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology, and her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Boulevard, Mid-American Review, Tupelo Quarterly, PANK, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, and elsewhere. Her writing has been recognized by awards from UC Berkeley and UT Dallas. She is currently taking an academic leave from UC Berkeley School of Law to pursue an MFA in Poetry at Vanderbilt University. In her free time, she likes to dream.

Danielle Emerson

Danielle Emerson is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. She has a B.A. in Education Studies and a B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. She has received support from GrubStreet, Lambda Literary, The Diné Artisan + Author Capacity Building Institute, Ucross Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. She has work published from swamp pink, Poets.org, Yellow Medicine Review, Thin Air Magazine,The Chapter House Journal, and others. Her writing centers healing, kinship, language-learning, and family.

Alexandra Green

Biography forthcoming

Noa Greenspan

Biography forthcoming

Christiana Castillo

Christiana Castillo (she/ella) is a Mexican-Brasilian-American poet, educator, cultural worker, and gardener. Her first poetry collection, Crushed Marigold, was published in 2020. Previous work can be found in The Pinch Journal, Room Magazine, The Acentos Review, and The Detroit Metro Times. She has had residencies and fellowships with Room Project, insideOut Literary Arts, Voices of Our Nations, and Disquiet International. She holds a BA from Wayne State University and M.A. Ed. from the University of Michigan. She is currently a first-year Poetry MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University.

Kinsale Drake

Kinsale Drake is a Diné writer and citizen of the Navajo Nation. A winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series for her debut poetry collection THE SKY WAS ONCE A DARK BLANKET (University of Georgia Press, 2024), her work often celebrates elders, cacti, and rock n roll. She is the founder of NDN Girls Book Club (www.ndngirlsbookclub.org).

 

 

 

Yevheniia Dubrova

Yevheniia Dubrova is a first-year MFA candidate in fiction from Donetsk, Ukraine. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College. Winner of the 2024 Lando Grant for refugee writing from the de Groot Foundation, she writes about displacement, loss, memory, and what endures and translates fiction, poetry, and plays from Ukrainian.

 

 

Johnny Nagle

Johnny Nagle completed his MA in Creative Writing at Queen's University Belfast in 2023. He is now a first-year MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University and is currently working on a revenge/campus novel set in South County Dublin.

 

 

Lana Reeves

Lana Reeves (she/her) grew up on the South Shore of O’ahu, Hawai’i. She graduated with honors from Harvard University, where she received summa cum laude on her thesis of original poetry and the Edward Eager Memorial Prize for best undergraduate creative writing. She also studied composition at the Berklee College of Music. Her poetry, sound art, criticism, and organizing are centered in decolonial action, with the goal of developing coalitions within and between American-occupied island nations. Her poetry can be found in publications including The Harvard Gazette and The Black Warrior Review.

 

Kanchi Sharma

Kanchi Sharma (she/they) is a fiction writer, poet, editor, creative strategist & communications specialist. She is an MFA Fiction candidate at Vanderbilt University where she is the Russell G. Hamilton Scholar. A Tin House '24 alum & Kenyon Developmental Editing Fellowship '24 finalist, Kanchi is the Prose Reader for Quarterly West Magazine (and formerly for GASHER Press & Journal). Older versions of Kanchi's poems appear in Live Wire, HEArt, PANK, TinySpoon. Their translation of a human-interest profile appears in PARI (People's Archive of Rural India). Kanchi comes from a small town near Mumbai. She's at work on a linked story collection & novel.

Langston Cotman

Langston Cotman (He/Him) is a second-year MFA candidate in fiction from Takoma Park, Maryland. He graduated with a BA in American Studies from Goucher College. His fiction appears in The Virginia Quarterly Review and BOMB Magazine. He walks like this and he dances like that.

 

 

Kumari Devarajan

Kumari Devarajan is a second-year MFA student in fiction from Washington DC. They were most recently an audio journalist at NPR’s Code Switch podcast where they received a Murrow Award and Apple Podcast of the Year Award. They graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in Economics and Women’s and Gender studies.

 

 

Ajla Dizdarević

Ajla Dizdarević has worked as an editor, educator, and Fulbright grantee in the US, Serbia, Croatia, and France. She was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship and received an honorable mention for a 2024 Academy of American Poets prize. Her work has been published in We the Interwoven, an anthology taught in high schools across Iowa; Plainsongs; and on the Iowa Review website as part of a David Hamilton Prize. Additionally, she received a grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs to support her writing. She holds a BA from the University of Iowa and is currently a second-year student in Vanderbilt University's MFA program.

Sydney Mayes

Sydney Mayes is a second-year poetry MFA candidate from Denver, Colorado. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Winner of the 2021 Iowa Chapbook Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Prairie Schooner.

 

 

Athena Nassar

Athena Nassar is an MFA candidate in poetry from Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of the debut poetry collection Little Houses (Sundress Publications). She is the winner of the 2021 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest, the 2021 Academy of American Poets College Prize, and the 2019 Scholastic National Gold Medal Portfolio Award, among other honors. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets, The Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, Pleiades, The Los Angeles Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.

Iman Saleem

Iman Saleem is a second-year fiction MFA candidate from Colombo. She graduated from the University of Kent in 2018 with a BA in Drama & English and American Literature. Since then, she has worked as a journalist, covering the mass anti-government protests in Sri Lanka throughout 2022.

 

 

Alissa M. Barr

Alissa M. Barr is a third-year poetry MFA candidate from Alleghany County, Virginia. She holds a BSN and worked as a CVICU nurse for several years. Alissa has received support through scholarships from Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.

 

 

Nathan Blum

Nathan Blum's work is featured or forthcoming in New England Review, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, The Rumpus, Chicago Review of Books, Jewish Book Council, and elsewhere. An Iowa Review Award Finalist and nominee for the 2025 PEN/Robert J Dau Story Prize, he has received fellowships and support from Bowdoin College, Vanderbilt University, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Craigardan Arts. He received his MFA from Vanderbilt University, where he taught creative writing and served as editor at Nashville Review. He is working on a collection of stories and a novel.

 

 

Michael Carlson

Michael Carlson is a second-year MFA candidate in fiction. He holds a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater where he majored in creative writing. Michael enjoys spending time with his wife, Kameo, running marathons, taking naps after reading, and helping other drug addicts find hope in recovery.

 

 

 

Carson Colenbaugh

Carson Colenbaugh is an MFA candidate in poetry from Kennesaw, Georgia. He graduated with a BS in horticulture from Clemson University, where he worked alongside the university and US Forest Service as a researcher and prescribed fire technician. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere; his scholarly work can be found in Human Ecology. He currently serves as an Editor- in-Chief for Nashville Review.

 

Lela Ni

Lela Ni (she/they) is a tattoo artist and a third-year MFA candidate in fiction. She received her undergraduate degree in English from University of Southern California and currently serves as a fiction and nonfiction reader for the Nashville Review. She is from Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

 

Anika Potluri

Anika Potluri is a third-year MFA candidate in Poetry. She holds a BA from Cornell University where she studied Literatures in English. She was a 2020-21 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets June Fellow. Her work appears in The Massachusetts Review and The Adroit Journal.