Notes on Contributors

Dana Alsamsam is a first generation Syrian-American from Chicago and is currently based in Boston where she works in arts development. A Lambda Literary fellow, she received her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Redivider and Senior Editorial Assistant at Ploughshares. She is the author of a chapbook, (in)habit (tenderness lit, 2018), and her poems are published or forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, The Shallow Ends, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, BOOTH, The Common, and others.

Rachel Andoga is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Indiana Review, The Citron Review, and Sundog Lit. She currently teaches and writes in Maryland.

Ally Ang is a gaysian poet and MFA candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle. Ally’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry, and they have been published in Nepantla, AAWW’s The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Find them at allysonang.com, or on Instagram and Twitter @theoceanisgay.

Gregory Ariail is from Georgia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Common, Indiana Review, The Florida Review, The Offing, CutBank, Diagram, and others. Currently he’s in the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. In 2019 he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail.  

Brian Czyzyk is an MFA candidate at Purdue University, originally from Northern Michigan. An AWP Intro Journals Project winner, his work has appeared in Nimrod, Split Rock Review, and Colorado Review, among others.

Emory R. Frie is the award-winning author of Heart of a Lion and the Realms Series, and has works published by The Journal and Ramifications. She is the founder of Life Lights Copywriting for social businesses and nonprofits, has a bachelor’s in creative writing at Berry College, and currently lives in Augusta, Georgia.

Jennifer Huang is a Taiwanese-American writer, teacher, and artist from Rockville, Maryland. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she recently received an M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her essays and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Sundog Lit.

Nazifa Islam grew up in Novi, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Account, and Beloit Poetry Journal among other publications, and her poetry collection Searching for a Pulse (2013) was released by Whitepoint Press. She earned her MFA at Oregon State University. You can find her @nafoopal. 

Alyssa Jewell coordinates the Poets in Print Reading Series for the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center and is an incoming Ph.D. student at Western Michigan University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Poet Lore, Tupelo Quarterly, and Washington Square Review, among other publications. She lives and teaches in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

David Kutz-Marks is the author of Violin Playing Herself in a Mirror (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), winner of the 2014 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, Boston Review, jubilat, and other venues. David serves on the faculty of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Lizzie Lawson is a Minnesota-born essayist with publications in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and others. She is currently an MFA student in creative writing at The Ohio State University. 

Rebecca Lindenberg is the author of Love, an Index (McSweeney’s) and The Logan Notebooks (Mountain West Poetry Series), winner of the 2015 Utah Book Award. She’s the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, an NEA Literature Grant, and a residential fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among other awards. Her work appears widely, including Best American Poetry 2019, POETRY, The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is a member of the poetry faculty at the University of Cincinnati, where she also serves as poetry editor for the Cincinnati Review.

Sarah Matthes is a poet from central New Jersey. Her debut collection of poetry Town Crier won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and is forthcoming with Persea Books in April 2021. Selected poems have appeared or are forthcoming with Pleiades, The Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Yalobusha Review, poets.org, Midst, and elsewhere. She has received support for her work from the Yiddish Book Center, and is the recipient of the 2019 Tor House Prize from the Robinson Jeffers Foundation. The managing editor of Bat City Review, she lives in Austin, TX. sarahmatthes.com

Iris McCloughan is a trans* poet living and working in Brooklyn. They were the winner of the 2018 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. They are the author of the chapbooks No Harbor (2014, L + S Press) and Triptych (forthcoming, Greying Ghost) and their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, jubilat, juked, Gertrude, and decomP, among others.

Sarah Messer is the author of four books, most recently Dress Made of Mice. She’s received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the NEA, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and others. Currently she teaches in the Residential College at the University of Michigan and cares for the goat herd at White Lotus Farms.

Emily Moeck’s work has appeared most recently in Fugue and New Letters, where she was nominated for the 2020 O’Henry. She holds an MFA from UMASs Boston where she was Editor-In-Chief of Breakwater Review. She is a film columnist for Atticus Review and is working on her PhD at University of Tennessee where she is Assistant Fiction Editor of Grist

Erika Nestor is from the Midwest. Her work appears and is forthcoming in LEVELER, DIALOGIST, Passages North, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. 

Suphil Lee Park was born and grew up in South Korea. She holds a BA in English from NYU and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Colorado Review, jubilat, the Missouri Review, and Ploughshares, among others. Her fiction is also forthcoming in the Iowa Review.

Karen Rigby is the author of Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press). Her poems have been published in Grain, Bennington Review, Australian Book Review, and other journals. She lives in Arizona. 

www.karenrigby.com

Katrina Roberts is author of four books of poems (Underdog; Friendly Fire; The Quick; and How Late Desire Looks; and a chapbook Lace; as well as editor of the anthology: Because You Asked. Her graphic poetry manuscript LIKENESS was named finalist for the Pleiades Visual Poetry Series in 2019. Nominated for a Pushcart prize, and finalist for the New Alchemy Award, her graphic work appears in journals such as The Ilanot Review, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Indianapolis Review, Permafrost, Thrush Poetry Journal, and various anthologies. She writes and draws in Walla Walla, Washington, where she teaches and curates the Visiting Writers Reading Series at Whitman College, and co-runs the Walla Walla Distilling Company. (www.katrinaroberts.net)

Jill Schepmann’s writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, and Parcel, and received a notable mention in The Best American Essays. She holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University. She teaches at the University of San Francisco, where she also serves as president of the Part-Time Faculty Association AFT/CFT Local 6590.

Managing Editor of the journal Phantom Drift, Matt Schumacher lives in Portland, Oregon, very near a Paul Bunyan statue. His sixth poetry collection, A Missing Suspiria de Profundis, was published last summer by Greying Ghost Press.

Sarah Grace Smith is an undergraduate student studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University. Her interests include speculative fiction as well as 19th and 20th century American literature, and she serves as a fiction reader for The Journal. She is also one of the university’s Eminence Fellows. 


Sophia Terazawa is a poet of Vietnamese-Japanese descent. She is the author of two chapbooks: Correspondent Medley (winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, published with Factory Hollow Press) and I AM NOT A WAR (a winner of the 2015 Essay Press Digital Chapbook Contest). Her poems appear in The Seattle Review, Puerto del Sol, Poor Claudia, and elsewhere. She is currently working toward the MFA in Poetry at the University of Arizona, where she also served as poetry editor for Sonora Review.