Rebecca Bornstein is a poet and worker currently living in Portland, Oregon. She’s held jobs as a production cook, professional goat-sitter, parking garage receptionist, and creative writing instructor. She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Columbia Journal, Slice, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Visit her website at rebeccabornstein.com
Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, BOAAT, Day One, Indiana Review, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2015, she was the first runner-up for the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Award for Poetry. She is currently poetry editor for Split Lip Magazine and lives with her husband in Tallahassee, Florida.
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and out now from BOA Editions. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Poetry, Bettering American Poetry, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He is a PhD student at Texas Tech University. For more, visit chenchenwrites.com.
Meghan Maguire Dahn grew up in the middle of the woods, alongside fisher cats and deer, beavers and coyotes, and a whole unintended aviary. Her first poem was published in Highlights Magazine and read primarily in waiting rooms by children nervous about getting shots or stitches. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, the Iowa Review on-line, the Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Phantom Limb, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gulf Stream, and ellipsis…a journal of art and culture. She was a winner of the 2014 Discovery/92nd Street Y Poetry Prize. She has an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She lives steps away from Manhattan’s only forest.
Lydia Davis’s most recent collection of stories is Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014). She is also the author of The Collected Stories (FSG, 2009), as well as translations of Proust’s Swann’s Way (Viking Penguin, 2002) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (Viking Penguin, 2010), among other works. Her translation from the Dutch of the very short stories of A.L. Snijders appeared last year in a bi-lingual edition published by AFdH in The Netherlands. Her translation of Proust’s Letters to His Neighbor appears this year from New Directions, and she is currently assembling a collection of essays.
Katie Farris is the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls, (Marick Press, 2011), and the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from the French, Chinese, and Russian. Her translations and original work have appeared in literary journals including Virginia Quarterly Review, Verse, and The Massachusetts Review. She received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University, and currently teaches at San Diego State University.
Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he completed his MFA at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016, Fjords Review, Gulf Coast, PANK, Poets.org, Prelude, Quiet Lunch, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives in South Florida (for now).
Noah Eli Gordon lives in Denver and teaches in the MFA Program at CU-Boulder, where he currently directs Subito Press. His books include The Word Kingdom in the Word Kingdom (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2015) and Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial, 2007), which was selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series and subsequently chosen for the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award.
Janice N. Harrington is the author of Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, The Hands of Strangers, and the newly released Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin. She curates “A Space for Image,” a blog on poetic imagery, and teaches at the University of Illinois.
Heikki Huotari is a retired professor of mathematics. In a past century, he attended a one-room country school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. His poems appear in numerous journals, recently in Spillway and the American Journal of Poetry, he’s the winner of the 2016 Gambling the Aisle chapbook contest, and his first book, Fractal Idyll,
Victoria Hsu graduated with a degree in Visual Arts from Brown University. She will be an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis in the fall.
Hong Kong bred, Sydney based, Henry Hu’s artworks are personal and intentional, with a focus on storytelling. He strives to assemble a full body of work, forming a series piece by piece. Each individual art series usually consist of multiple pieces, grouped by specific concepts or stories. By experimenting with digital tools, visually Henry commits to linking something fresh, alternative yet familiar, and presenting them in traditional forms.
Elizabeth Knapp is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. The recipient of awards from Literal Latté and Iron Horse Literary Review, she has published poems in AGNI, Barrow Street, Best New Poets, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and many other journals. She teaches at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
David Kutz-Marks is the author of Violin Playing Herself in a Mirror (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), selected by James Tate, Dara Wier and James Haug for the 2014 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Boston Review, Kenyon Review Online, jubilat, Verse Daily, and other venues.
Cade Leebron is a writer living in Columbus, Ohio. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University, where she serves as an editor at The Journal. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Deaf Poets Society, The Establishment, and elsewhere. Currently, she podcasts at The Cold Take and serves as the managing editor of Us For President. Find her online at www.mslifeisbestlife.com or on Twitter @CadeyLadey.
Rachel Litchman is a high school senior at Interlochen Arts Academy. Her poetry and prose have been recognized by the Hippocrates Young Poets’ Prize for Poetry and Medicine, the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, and The Glimmer Train Press Short Story Award for New Writers. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, New South, and others. She is currently a poetry reader for the Adroit Journal. This poem was published with permission of the Hippocrates prize.
Erin Lynch‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She currently lives in Seattle, where she is a 2017-2018 Made at Hugo House Fellow.
Rebecca Macijeski holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been awarded artist residencies at The Ragdale Foundation, Art Farm Nebraska, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Sycamore Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poet Lore, Fairy Tale Review, Puerto del Sol, and many other places. This fall she will join the creative writing faculty at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Randall Mann‘s fourth collection of poems, Proprietary, was recently published by Persea Books. He lives in San Francisco.
Lynn Melnick is the author of Landscape with Sex and Violence (forthcoming, October 2017) and If I Should Say I Have Hope, and the co-editor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation. A 2017-2018 fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, she serves on the Executive Board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Rachel Mindell is writer and teacher from Tucson, AZ. Her chapbook, A Teardrop and a Bullet, was released last year by Dancing Girl Press. Individual poems have appeared in Pool, DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, BOAAT, and elsewhere. She works for Submittable.
Anthony Moll (@anthonywmoll) is a poet, essayist and educator. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts and is completing his PhD in poetry and Queer theory. His chapbook about the melancholy of the modern workplace; Go to the Ant, O Sluggard; is available now from Akinoga Press. His debut memoir won the 2017 Non/Fiction Prize from The Journal, and will be published in late 2018 by Mad Creek Books.
Sean Patrick Mulroy earned his MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His poetry has been read, performed and taught all over the world, in over 20 countries on 4 continents. He can be reached via his website (http://www.thevanishingman.com) or via twitter (@thevanisher) where he pretty much never shuts up.
Nhu Xuân Nguyễn is a trans Vietnamese American writer. Their work appears or is forthcoming in The Offing and Deluge and on Button Poetry.
Noelle Kocot is the author of seven books of poems, most recently, Phantom Pains of Madness (Wave Books, 2016). She has won numerous awards and honors for her work, and is Poet Laureate of Pemberton Borough, NJ.
Rosa Hiraya Pangilinan’s work has appeared in the 2007 Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans. She is the winner of the 2011 The Labyrinth Poetry Contest judged by Barbara Fischer. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Psychology from The New School, having received her B.A. in English from Rutgers University–Newark and her A.A. in History from Bergen Community College. She has worked with Helen Wan in the 2016 Turning Your Real Life into Fiction workshop. Rosa lives and works in New Jersey.
Chet’la Sebree was the 2014-2016 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. She is a graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program and has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, and The Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse, and BOAAT.
Melissa Studdard’s books include the poetry collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and the novel Six Weeks to Yehidah. Her writings have appeared in a wide range of publications, such as Poets & Writers, Southern Humanities Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Psychology Today. She is the executive producer and host of VIDA Voices & Views for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and an editor for American Microreviews and Interviews.
Sara Wainscott’s recent work appears in DIAGRAM, The Journal Petra, Powder Keg, BOAAT, Fairy Tale Review, The Collapsar, and elsewhere. Her chapbook of sevenlings is forthcoming from dancing girl press (2017). She co-curates Wit Rabbit, an inter-genre reading series in Chicago.
Rushi Vyas is a poet currently living in Boulder, CO where he teaches creative writing and is working toward an MFA at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He serves as Managing Editor of Timber Journal and he coordinates multiple reading series in the Boulder area. His writing can be found in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, tap Magazine, and elsewhere.
The product of a Chinese immigrant and a white polygamist from Fort Scott, Kansas, Ashley Yang-Thompson was born in Washington State in 1993 and grew up in San Francisco. She graduated from Kenyon College in 2015, where she received Honors and Distinction in Studio Art. Now based in Queens, NY, she lives and works in a greeting card factory.
Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. His numerous collections of poetry include Strike Anywhere (1995), winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Skid (2002), finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Primitive Mentor (2008), shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize. He has also written a book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction (2010). Young has been awarded a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His poems have been featured in Best American Poetry numerous times. Young has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and the University of Texas-Austin where he holds the William Livingston Chair of Poetry.