Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of the little book Erik Satie Watusies His Way Into Sound and the chapbook Don’t Let Me Forget To Feed the Sharks. He currently lives in Lincoln, NE, where he co-curates The Clean Part Reading Series. Recent poetry by him appears or will appear in Gulf Coast, Salt Hill, Redivider and Boston Review.
Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), winner the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A former Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she’s currently a doctoral candidate and King/Chávez/Parks Fellow at Western Michigan University.
Zephaniah Bostow grew up in the Texas hill country, born the third youngest of seven children. He spent his days in church and his nights at tent revivals. When he was eight, his family moved to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, where he thought the kids talked funny. After high school, he went to the University of Kentucky to study Vocal Music Performance. The Piccardy thirds and Plagal cadences of Brahms and Bach began to wear on him, so he took to writing his own songs (however meek and small they were). Zephaniah’s church-filled childhood has permeated his writing, often leading to stories that meld religion and folklore. Upon graduation, Zephaniah moved to Nashville, where he is currently teaching 6th Grade Reading, working on a collection of short stories, and producing a self-recorded album.
Jonathan Brown graduated with a BA in Communication from the College of Charleston and an MA in Writing and Consciousness from Then New College of California. He is currently working on his MFA at The University of New Orleans. He was the winner of the 2010 and 2012 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Poetry Slam in New Orleans. His poems have been published in the Worcester Review, Ampersand, and Indiefeed: Performance Poetry. He recently received the John Woods Scholarship to study in Prague. Learn more at http://jonathanbrownpoetry.tumblr.com/ and http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jonathanbrown22
Leanne Chabalko earned her M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University and received the 2012 Ann Fields Poetry Prize. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Stoneboat, Used Furniture Review, Sugar Mule, Caesura and Bookmarks. She works in advertising and lives with her husband in San Francisco.
Brad Clompus: Poetry and essays by Brad Clompus have appeared in such places as West Branch, The Journal, Willow Springs, Zone 3, Sonora Review, Ascent, and Tampa Review. He teaches literature at Lesley University and poetry workshops in a variety of settings.
Eryn Cruft lives in Bloomington, IN but will soon be leaving for London to study for a Master’s degree in Language and Cognition at King’s College. Previous collaborations with Traci Brimhall have appeared in Guernica magazine and through Thrush Poetry. Eryn has also contributed work to the Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science.
Thom Donovan, singer, songwriter and guitarist, began his career as a session musician—recording and touring worldwide with a variety of artists. Unfulfilled by his work performing other artist’s compositions, he formed a band of his own called Lapush. The goal was simple—“To make records that I would buy”. The band’s debut album, Someplace Closer To Here(456/Fontana), was released in 2005. Later that same year Lapush made their network television debut on Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC. The album’s second single, “Aurora”, was featured in the cult television series “Moonlight” (CBS). The album and single each peaked at #15 on the Alternative/Specialty Charts. The band’s second album, Modern Blues, was released in 2007 through their own imprint. The first single, “Closer”, has appeared in MTV’s popular show, “The Hill’s”. Songs from both releases have made frequent appearances on MTV, VH-1, and The Lifetime Movie Network. Thom Donovan released his debut solo album, Cast A Light, in 2010. Cast A Light is the sound of an artist passing through music history, gathering aged sounds and pushing them into the future. The album has been featured on KROQ as well as a variety of television shows on MTV, VH-1, and the Oprah Winfrey Network. Donovan’s music has also appeared in the independent film, “Outpatient” (Clear Pictures). The Riverfront Times notes, “Cast A Light considers mature themes, set to the chimes of twelve-string guitars, tidy hooks and immediate melodies”.
Anne Emond received her MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2010, and current resides in Brooklyn, NY. Her semi-regularly updated webcomic can be viewed at www.comiques.tumblr.com.
Amanda Fields’ work has been published in Indiana Review, Brevity, Cerise Press, Contemporary American Voices, and Superstition Review. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart, and her nonfiction has been reprinted in three readers. She received an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She is working on a novel and pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric & Composition at the University of Arizona.
What initially began as a solo project for singer/songwriter David McMillin gradually transformed into Fort Frances: a three-piece band whose debut album represents more than two years of drawing their own map for musical exploration. With an all-instruments-on-board approach to writing and recording, their heavily textured style introduces you to a band with a Beatles influence that shines through every note.
Sydney Freeland is a freelance filmmaker who has done work for a number of companies, including The Food Network, Office Max, Audi, National Geographic, PBS, and Walt Disney. She is also a recipient of the following awards: 2010 Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, 2010 Sundance Directing Fellow, 2010 Eccles Directing Fellow, 2009 Sundance Native American Lab Fellow, 2008 Disney Fellowship semi-finalist, 2007 Disney Scholarship recipient, and a 2004 Fulbright Scholar. She has also received grants from the Annenberg and Ford Foundations. Sydney has an MFA in Film and a BFA in Computer Animation, and currently lives and works between Los Angeles and her home state of New Mexico.
Bryan Furuness is the author of the forthcoming novel, The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson. His stories and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, Southeast Review, Hobart, and elsewhere, including New Stories from the Midwest and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches at Butler University, where he is the Editor in Chief of the small press, Pressgang. His deadlift max is still stuck at 465 pounds.
Gwendolyn Jensen began writing poems when she retired in 2001 from the presidency of Wilson College (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania). The places where her work has appeared include the Beloit Poetry Journal, Chautauqua, The Comstock Review, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Measure, The Malahat Review, and Salamander. Birthright, her first book of poems, was published last year by Birch Brook Press in a letterpress edition, and went into a second printing this spring.
Ashley Keyser currently lives in Ukraine. She enjoys reading Marianne Moore and Virginia Woolf.
Sarah Marcus holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University. A staff blogger for So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language & Art, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, CALYX Journal, Spork, Slipstream, Tidal Basin Review, and Cold Mountain Review, among others. She was the 2012 Booth Poetry Prize Runner-Up, as selected by Linda Gregg, was named a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review 2011 Single-Author Competition in Poetry, and a finalist in Glimmer Train’s November 2010 Short Story Award for New Writers competition. She lives in Cleveland, OH.
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, critic and painter. He received the Bordighera Book Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday, the Grolier Prize for Almost a Second Thought, a Van Renssalaer Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, two Pushcart nominations, and finalist nominations for The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat. He has recent poems in AGNI, Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Chelsea, The Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, Pirene’s Fountain, Provincetown Arts, The Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School.
Mike Meginnis has published stories in Hobart, The Collagist, The Lifted Brow, Booth, PANK, elimae, and many others. He currently serves as prose editor for Noemi Press, and co-edits Uncanny Valley with his wife, Tracy Rae Bowling. He plays weekly collaborative text adventures with writers at exitsare.com.
Hope Mohr trained at San Francisco Ballet School and on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio and the Trisha Brown Studio. She has performed in the companies of many dance pioneers including Trisha Brown, Margaret Jenkins, Lucinda Childs, and Douglas Dunn. Since her choreographic debut in 1994, Mohr has presented her work in a wide range of venues on both coasts, from Judson Church and the Cunningham Studio in New York to Seattle’s Velocity Dance Center. Mohr is currently an artist in residence at ODC Theater. She has been an artist in residence at Montalvo Arts Center and at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance. She was a 2009 participant in Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange with mentor Molissa Fenley. In 2005, she assisted Lucinda Childs in the premiere of Dr. Atomic for S.F. Opera. 2012 marks her fifth commission at Stanford University. In 2010, Mohr and poet Brenda Hillman were nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for their performance text for Mohr’s Far From Perfect. Mohr’s article The Language of the Listening Body was recently published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. www.hopemohr.org
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Crazyhorse, Southern Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New York Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, and Cincinnati Review. He won the 2011 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and the 2010 Southeast Review AWP Short Poetry contest. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri in 2012.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-editor of Four Way Books’ nascent literary journal, Four Way Review. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She holds her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Her first chapbook, If I Am Burning, was published by Main Street Rag in 2011. Her recent poems appear in Redivider, Fugue, The Greensboro Review, Superstition Review, and others. Her Myers-Briggs type is ENFJ.
Pickles!, Master Obsessor and Creator of Fantastical Things, was born in Detroit, attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and now lives in San Francisco. She enjoys working in many media including pen & ink, paint, and small sculpture. Her greatest inspirations include bright color, obsessive detail, teeth, and hand drawn pattern. To reach Pickles, email pickles@milktruck.biz, or visit her profile at www.milkTruck.biz
F. Daniel Rzicznek’s collections and chapbooks of poetry include Vine River Hermitage (Cooper Dillon Books 2011), Divination Machine (Free Verse Editions/ Parlor Press 2009), Neck of the World (Utah State University Press 2007), and Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press 2006). His individual poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, Orion, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, Notre Dame Review, and many other publications. Also coeditor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press 2010), Rzicznek teaches writing at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Emma Sovich lives in Tuscaloosa, AL and edits Black Warrior Review. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Gargoyle, PANK, Weave, and others. She blogs at graveyardhouse.com.
Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and two collections of poems, the forthcoming Notes from the Journey Westward, winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and Killing the Murnion Dogs, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the High Plains Book Award. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, Ecotone, The Sun Magazine, Orion, and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in north Iowa.
Harold Whit Williams, “a genuine power-pop guitar hero” according to Trouser Press, was born and raised in the musically renowned Muscle Shoals area of Alabama. He plays guitar for the critically acclaimed Texas band Cotton Mather. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Slipstream, Oklahoma Review, Weave, Oxford American, Tulane Review, and other fine journals. His collection, Waiting For The Fire To Go Out, is available from Finishing Line Press. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Dallas Woodburn‘s short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Dzanc Books “Best of the Web” anthology, and has appeared in Monkeybicycle, The Valparaiso Fiction Review, Arcadia Journal, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and flashquake, among others. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing at Purdue University, where she also serves as Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review.