Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author. She holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Threepenny Review, The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and The Huffington Post. A Best of the Net nominee, she has won multiple writing contests, including the 2026 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Learn more at www.bethanybrunowriter.com
Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of four living in Redondo Beach, California. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and Whale Road Review among other literary journals. He was previously a member of Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective and has appeared on the Rattlecast Invited Prompt Lines.
Adelia Gregoryis a writer currently based in Minnesota. Her writing has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Literature.
Tracy Grikscheit is a California poet scribbling on a scrap of paper next to the ocean after seeing a squadron of pelicans.
Megan Hall is a poet and third-year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at Georgia State University. Rooted in the landscapes and histories of the South, her work engages themes of ecofeminism, bodily autonomy, and the intersections of poverty, gender, and power. She is currently completing a book-length collection that examines the systemic inequalities shaping and endangering the lives of women and girls. Her poems have appeared in Yalobusha Review, Wild Roof Journal, Soliloquies Anthology, Inkwell Journal, and Slipstream Magazine, among others.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020), Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025), Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the forthcoming, The Lighthouse Tattoo (Acre Books, 2026). He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside and Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.
Jenny Jope is a writer, fine art photographer, and counselor whose work explores the ways we endure. Her stories often unfold at pivotal emotional thresholds, examining the quiet resilience that emerges in the aftermath of grief. Echoing her work as a photographer, her storytelling is grounded in atmosphere and utilizes careful framing. Alongside her creative work, she helps lead a nonprofit foundation dedicated to supporting survivors of domestic violence. She holds a BA in English and psychology from Simmons University and an MA in Counseling Psychology from Boston College. She lives in New England, where she continues to write about the fragile, complicated relationships and the moments that invite us to begin again.
Jeremy Teddy Karn was born in Monrovia, Liberia. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He writes and teaches creative writing for a living. More of his writing and publications can be found on his website: www.jeremyteddykarn.com
Ben Kline lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. A poet, information professional, Madonna mega-fan slash podcaster, and one of the team behind the University of Cincinnati Libraries POETRY STACKED series, Ben cohosts the MLVC Podcast and is the author of Twang (ELJ Editions), Stiff Wrist (fourteen poems), and the 2026 Lambda Literary Award-winning collection It Was Never Supposed to Be (Variant Literature). His work has also appeared in Copper Nickel, Florida Review, Palette Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, DIAGRAM and other publications.
Marie Kressin earned her MFA from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She has been published in Arkansas’s Best Emerging Poets, SLANT, The Arkansas International, Timber, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Marie was selected as Dairy Hollow’s 2023 Moondancer Fellow for Environmental Writers and participated in the 2026 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. Currently, she works as the Acquisitions Manager for April Gloaming Publishing in Nashville and is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Hendrix College.
Hannah Kroonblawd lives in eastern Nebraska, where she teaches creative writing at Concordia University. She attended the MFA program in poetry at Oregon State University, and the PhD program in English Studies at Illinois State University. She is the author of the chapbook The Leafcutters, the Minor Saints (Press 254) and recent poems have appeared in Potomac Review, Soundings East, and Mid-American Review, among others.
Giljoon Lee is a writer from Gyeonggi-do and the Bay Area. He won the 2026 Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award. His work appears or is forthcoming in Liberties, phoebe, Foglifter, and elsewhere. His friends call him Justin. Find him at giljoon.com
S.A. Leger is a writer and ornithologist based in St. John’s, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). She is Associate Poetry Editor at Pleiades, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Third Coast, The Los Angeles Review, Wildness, and The Offing. Her best days are spent at a cabin in the woods with her wife and dachshund.
JoAnna Mak is a poet whose work examines alienation, structural violence, and the things that make love durable. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Margins, Variant Literature, and elsewhere. They are currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Amy Sacksteder’s work explores personal and collective relationships to landscape, material, and artifact. She works among painting, collage, drawing, glass, and ceramics. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, recently at River House Arts (Toledo, OH); David Lusk Gallery (Nashville, TN); I Like Your Work (online w catalog); Saint Kate (Milwaukee, WI); Ox-Bow House (Douglas, MI); and Good Naked x The Middle Room (Los Angeles, CA) among other venues. Her work has been featured in The Offing, the Chicago Tribune, and New American Paintings and included in the Flat File 2022 Program at Ortega y Gasset Projects, where she was also a 2022 and 2024 Artist to Watch. She presently has work included in the Flat File Index at Real Tinsel in Milwaukee. Her work is included in collections at institutions such as Cranbrook Art Museum and Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. Sacksteder is a member of the Long Island City Studio Collective, lives and works outside of Detroit, and is a professor in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University.
Joe Sacksteder is the author of Make/Shift (Sarabande Books), Driftless Quintet (Schaffner Press), and Hack House (Astrophil Press). His work has been featured in The Atlantic’sculture roundup, and recent publications include LIT, Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His album of Werner Herzog audio collages, Fugitive Traces, is streamable for free at Punctum Books. He has a PhD from the University of Utah and currently lives and teaches in Virginia.
Anna Sheffer holds an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her fiction has previously appeared in Porter House Review, phoebe, The Greensboro Review, and New Ohio Review. Find her on Instagram (@a.na.grams) and Bluesky (@annasheffer.bsky.social).
Orchid Tierney is a poet and scholar, originally from New Zealand. She is the author of THIS ABATTOIR IS A COLLEGE (Calamari Archive, 2025) and A YEAR OF MISREADING THE WILDCATS (The Operating System, 2019) as well as several chapbooks including, PEDAGOGIES FOR THE PLANTHROPOSCENE (above/ground press, 2025), LOOKING AT THE TINY: MAD LICHEN ON THE SURFACES OF READING (Essay Press, 2023). Orchid teaches at Kenyon College, is a senior editor at the Kenyon Review, and invites you to visit her website at www.orchidtierney.com
Daniel Uncapher is the author of American Pomology (CutBank Books, 2025). He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Utah and an MFA from Notre Dame, where he was a Nicholas Sparks Fellow. A queer and disabled Mississippian, his work has been supported by Bread Loaf, Tin House, and The Kenyon Review, and has appeared in The Sun, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Chicago Review, and Ninth Letter, where he won the 2024 Creative Nonfiction Award.
Marc-Anthony Valleis a mixed-Black poet from the Pacific Northwest. He received his MFA from WashU. Marc-Anthony was selected as a scholarship participant for the 2026 DISQUIET workshop in Lisbon. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, swamp pink, Notre Dame Review, The Hopkins Review, Bat City Review, Frozen Sea, and elsewhere. Find him at marc-anthony.net
This issue of The Journal is made possible by the support of the Ohio Arts Council.
