Anne Barngrover is the author of Yell Hound Blues and co-author with Avni Vyas of the chapbook Candy in Our Brains. Her poems have appeared in Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, and others. She earned her MFA at Florida State University and is currently a PhD student in Poetry at University of Missouri.

Heather Bowlan lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University, where she received an Academy of American Poets Award for 2014. Her work has appeared in How2, Gulf Stream, and Walter. She serves as a member of the poetry staff for Raleigh Review.

Anna Burch studied film at Michigan State and the University of Chicago. Something of an inadvertent actress, Anna has found herself a participant in several MFA films, and she ventured into performance in the short ‘Pink Noir.’ She creates music as often as she can, and continues to collaborate on various projects in Detroit and Chicago, exploring her interest in music and filmmaking. Anna is a singer and bassist in the Detroit-based group Frontier Ruckus. And she loves Busby Berkeley musicals (erotic, populist, camp––what not to love).

Trina Burke has written three chapbooks: Wreck Idyll (Dancing Girl Press, 2013), The Best Divorce (Alice Blue Books, 2012), and Great America (Dancing Girl Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Ellipsis, Third Wednesday, and Caesura. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and currently lives in Seattle.

C is most interested in how music composition is reacting to technology and has been composing symphonic headphone music written to accompany physical experiences in the landscape. It is not only his goal to write music that feels good, but also to write music that asks bigger questions and is constantly seeking. He hopes the pieces he writes not only sound good, but express a larger collection of ideas and questions for the listener to think about. C sees his music as a compositional and stylistic response to the changing world of music listening. He thinks the fact that many people now bring their music with them everywhere they go and listen almost exclusively with earbuds has re-informed the music world.

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is the recipient of the 2014 John K. Walsh Residency Fellowship, the 2014 Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellowship, and a 2013 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. Luisa holds an MFA from Boston University. Born in Colombia and raised in New York City, a former attorney, Luisa left the legal profession to pursue her passion for writing. She has received various awards for her poetry and was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Jelly Bucket, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, PALABRA, San Pedro River Review, Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011, and elsewhere.

Charlie Clark’s poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Pleiades, Smartish Pace, West Branch, and other journals. He studied poetry at the University of Maryland and lives in Austin, Texas.

Meri Culp has been published in various journals, including Quinebaug Valley Review, Espresso Ink, About Place, Cider Press Review, Southeast Review, Apalachee Review, BOMB, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rose & Thorn, Nomads, Snug, The Northeast Chronicle, Asp, and Sweet: A Literary Confection. Her poems have also appeared online in True/Slant, Poets for Living Waters, and USA Today and in the anthologies The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast, North of Wakulla, Think: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat, and All of Us: Poems from our First Five Years (forthcoming). She was also a finalist in the 2013 Peter Meinke Poetry Competition and the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry competition for her collection, Cayenne Warning.

John Davis Jr. is a Florida writer and educator. His poetry has been published in literary journals internationally, and he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Tampa, and serves Harrison School of the Arts as creative writing teacher.

Daniel DeVaughn is the executive director of the arts journal Cumulus, as well as the co-curator of The Daily Dive, an online forum for the exchange of new music and visual art. He holds an MFA from the University of Oregon, and has received fellowships from Sewanee, the Norman Mailer
Writer’s Workshop, and the Vermont College of the Fine Arts.

Jonathan Durbin is a New York City–based author whose writing has appeared in One Story, Interview, Travel + Leisure, Esquire, Paper and elsewhere. He is an alumnus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Writers’ Institute at the City University of New York. He is currently working on a novel and finishing a collection of short fiction.

Lucy Bryan Green spent the summer of 2013 working as a backpacking guide in Yosemite National Park. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Penn State University and a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her essays, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in Superstition Review, Word Riot, Sojourners magazine, New Letters, So to Speak, and The Georgia Review, among others. She currently lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia and works at James Madison University.

Anya Groner’s prose poetry can be read in journals including Juked, Ninth Letter, Guernica, and The Oxford American. Currently, she lives in New Orleans and teaches writing at Loyola University.

Biliana Grozdanova is a music documentarian who has been traveling the world ever since she can remember. Originally from Bulgaria, she found herself studying film in Madrid, Spain, after continent hopping for almost two decades. On the northern shores of the Iberian Peninsula she shot her first feature length documentary, Ortigueira: Echoes At Land’s End, a music festival film painting the cultural, social (and very international) landscape of the small town of Ortigueira. Biliana received her MA in film studies from the University of Chicago, where she focused on the music documentary and the audiences of this genre. During her three-year Chicago chapter, alongside her sister Marina Grozdanova (El Jinete Films), she completed her second feature length documentary, The Last Kamikazis of Heavy Metal, a film following the Chicago heavy metal band Hessler across America. Currently, Biliana lives in New Orleans, a city she hopes to call home after 27 years of drifting, and is looking for her next project.

Heatwarmer: Emerging from the unlikely confluence of Seattle’s underground indie and avant-garde Jazz scenes is a new offering of shape-shifting, ornately arranged pop tunes by Heatwarmer. The five-piece formed in music school where they met. Their music is simultaneously a tongue in cheek and deferential nod to music academia as it cherry-picks from disparate points across Western music history, using it as a mode of counterpoint. At the core, their song structure is both intuitive and sophisticated with contagious pop hooks and elegant chord patterns. The treatment of the songs juxtapose pieces of jazz, arena rock, Bollywood soundtrack, Caribbean drumming, 80s synth pop, classical, and free improvisation humorously, but not without taste. A local favorite, Heatwarmer has become known for their invigorating and virtuosic live performances, and four years since their inception they are presenting their debut album and embarking on a string of US tours. Visit their site at http://facebook.com/heatwarmer.

Cindy King’s most recent publications include poems in Callaloo, the North American Review, the African American Review, the American Literary Review, jubilat, River Styx, Barrow Street. Her work can also be heard online on American Weekend, a production of National Public Radio, at weekendamerica.publicradio.org, at rhinopoetry.org, and at pankmagazine.com. 
She has received scholarships and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers’ Workshop, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, the Colgate Writers Workshop, and others. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she currently lives in Texas, where she teaches at the University of North Texas Dallas as an Assistant Professor of English.

Laura Kochman is originally from New Jersey, but currently lives, writes, and feed her cat in Philadelphia. She is an assistant editor for Coconut Magazine, and her recent work is found in Sundog Lit, Ghost Proposal, MiPOesias, La Vague, and others. Her chapbook, Future Skirt, was released from dancing girl press in the fall of 2013.

Brittany Newell grew up playing classical violin and piano, and early on learned to appreciate the intricacy of old melodies. Stylistically influenced by ballads and heartfelt songs steeped in the last century, she loves to weave straight traditional tunes into heartbreaking journeys. Mathematics and Orchestra teacher by day, Brittany gets inspiration from her students, friends and community of old time music lovers. Visit her site at http://barnowlsmusic.com.

Makoto Ogawa is a writer and illustrator originally from Los Angeles, CA. He has a fondness for coffee shops and the Midwest. Follow his blog at www.doodledoodleonthewall.com.

Calvin Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, Idaho, the small town that continues to inform his writing. He holds an MFA from Boston University where he received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship to translate in the Iberian Peninsula. His poetry and translations have appeared in Catch and Release, Salamander, New Haven Review, SWAMP, eXchanges, and Lay Bare the Canvas: New England Poetry and Art, among others; and he has presented work at a variety of venues, including TEDxNewEngland and the Blacksmith House Poetry Series. He currently lives and teaches in Boston and can be found on Twitter @cal_olsen.

Charlie Parr: Many people play roots music, but few modern musicians live those roots like Minnesota’s Charlie Parr. Recording since the earliest days of the 21st century, Parr’s heartfelt and plaintive original folk blues and traditional spirituals don’t strive for authenticity: They are authentic. Visit his website at http://www.charlieparr.com/.

Summer Pierre is a cartoonist, illustrator, & writer living in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the author of The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Thrive and Survive Seven Days a Week. Her writing and art have appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, and Booth Literary Journal among other places. Find more of her work at www.summerpierre.com.

Rolli is a writer, illustrator and cartoonist hailing from Canada. He’s the author of two short story collections (I Am Currently Working On a Novel and God’s Autobio), a book of poems (Plum Stuff), and the middle grade catstravaganza Dr. Franklin’s Staticy Cat. His cartoons appear regularly in Reader’s Digest, Harvard Business Review, Adbusters, The Chronicle of Higher Education and other popular outlets. Visit Rolli’s website and follow him on Twitter @rolliwrites.

George Schaefer lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. He studied film at Oberlin College and the University of Chicago, and has been making movies for about a decade. His short film “Pink Noir” is the culmination of an interest in visual space and narrative structure that began in his video work while at the University of Chicago. He looks forward to making a movie with some openness, like a big field in which grass moves with the wind. George volunteers as a projectionist at the student run theatre Doc Films, does some darkroom work for the hell of it, and maintains an interest in 16mm. He teaches Arts and Humanities at Prairie State College.

Sylvia Watanabe is a writer and graphic artist from Hawaii, a geographical and cultural landscape which continues to influence her work. “The Lady in the Song” is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress about a bi-racial family in the islands, during the years of the nuclear testing in the Pacific. Watanabe is a member of the Creative Writing faculty at Oberlin College.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry, winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award, and two collections of poems, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. Of Wilkins’ work, Deborah Kim, editor at the Indiana Review, writes, “The most striking component of it is its awareness of ‘the whole world.’ What is ordinary becomes transcendent. In places derelict and seemingly unexceptional, Wilkins compels us to recognize what is worth salvage, worth praise.” Though born and raised on the high plains of eastern Montana, Wilkins now lives with his wife, son, and daughter in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where he teaches writing at Linfield College. You can find him online at www.joewilkins.org.