Notes on Contributors

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian American poet and PhD candidate at Harvard University. They are a Kundiman fellow, a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and the author of Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020).

Bay Area native and poet, Marissa Ahmadkhani holds an MA in English from Cal Poly SLO. Her work has been published or forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, The West Review, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine.

Evelyn N. Alfred is an information professional who works at the Government Publishing Office in Library Services & Content Management. Her writing can be found at UnderblongThe Offing, and Lines + Stars. She lives in Maryland with her wife. 

Jacqueline Boucher lives and writes in Alaska, where she serves as the poetry editor for Lammergeier Magazine. A Best New Poets 2020 nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, The McNeese Review, New South, The Rupture, and other magazines. She can be found on Twitter @jacqueboucher.

Despy Boutris‘s writing has been published or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, Southern Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston, works as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.

Sam Burt is a poet and cheesemonger who has lived in Iowa City since graduating from Grinnell College with a degree in Russian. His poems may also be found in The Maine Review and Stone Coast Review, as well as forthcoming works in Salt Hill, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Rattle.

Jordan Charlton is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska. He also works with the Nebraska Writers Collective, working with both high school youth poets and incarcerated writers through the programs Louder Than a Bomb: Great Plains and Writers’ Block.

Sean Cho A. is the associate & social media editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal and an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Salt Hill, The Portland Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize.

Brian Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). They have work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, Quarterly West, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. They are an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.

Brittny Ray Crowell is a native of Texarkana, TX. She received a B.A. in English from Spelman College, and an M.A. in English from Texas A&M-Texarkana. Her work has been published in The West Review, Glass Poetry Press, and the anthology Black Lives Have Always Mattered. Her work focuses on hidden mythologies of the contemporary South. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston where she serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast.

Satya Dash‘s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Florida Review, Hobart and The Cortland Review, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He is a two-time Orison Anthology and Best New Poets nominee. He spent his early years in Odisha, India and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets at: @satya043

Anjali Emsellem is a poet from the Bay Area and founding editor of ATM Magazine (atm-magazine.com). Anjali has self-published two chapbooks, In the Yawn and Animacy Effect, and is published in the Quarterless Review. Anjali’s poems consider what is animate, what is dying, and what has yet to be born.

Sara Femenella‘s poems have been published in Pleiades, The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander and Rumble Fish Quarterly, among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Shelby Handler is a writer, organizer and educator living on Duwamish territory/Seattle, WA. A 2019 Richard Hugo House fellow, their work has been supported by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Gay City Arts, Asylum Arts and the Yiddish Book Center. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Pacifica Literary Review, Homology Lit, 3Elements Review, glitterMOB and the Write Bloody anthology, “We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival.” Follow them @shelbeleh.

Heather Heckman-McKenna is a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri, studying and teaching literature and creative writing with a focus on women’s and gender studies. She’s published her creative work in CutBank and Eckleburg, amongst others, and two essays from her in-progress memoir, Finding Orange, were nominated for the Pushcart in 2018 and 2019. “Chroma” is also an essay from her memoir. Heather volunteers her time as a domestic violence advocate and gives talks and readings about domestic and sexual violence. You can reach Heather at heatherheckmanmckenna.wordpress.com.

Katherine Indermaur is the author of the chapbook Pulse (Ghost City Press, 2018), winner of the Black Warrior Review 2019 Poetry Contest and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Prize, runner-up in the 92Y’s 2020 Discovery Poetry Contest, and editor for Sugar House Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Coast|NoCoast, the Cortland Review, Entropy, Frontier Poetry, New Delta Review, Oxidant|Engine, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives in Salt Lake City.

Hannah Kroonblawd is completing a PhD in English Studies at Illinois State University, where she teaches writing courses and serves as the assistant poetry editor for SRPR (Spoon River Poetry Review). Also a graduate of the MFA program at Oregon State University, her recent work can be found in Puerto del Sol, Washington Square Review, and Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology.

David Dodd Lee is the author of nine full-length books of poems & a chapbook, including Downsides of Fish Culture (New Issues Press, 1997), Arrow Pointing North (Four Way Books, 2002), Abrupt Rural (New Issues Press, 2004), Orphan, Indiana (University of Akron Press, 2010), Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), and two volumes of Ashbery erasure poems. He has published fiction in Willow Springs, New World Writing, Sou’wester, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. He is also a painter and a collage artist, who often exhibits his work in galleries in the U.S. Recent artwork has also appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Permafrost, The Hunger, Pinball, & Twyckenham Notes. He provides illustrations for essays and fiction regularly at The Rumpus. In 2016 he began making sculpture, most of which he installs on various public lands, surreptitiously. Unlucky Animals, a book of collages, photographs, several long original poems, erasures, and dictionary sonnets is forthcoming in early 2021. He is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University South Bend where he is also Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.

He has been posting work on Instagram since October, 2019 at instagram.com/davidlee2588. Older work appears at Seventeenfingeredpoetrybird.blogspot.com.

Sara Femenella‘s poems have been published in Pleiades, The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander and Rumble Fish Quarterly, among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

Susannah Lodge-Rigal holds an MFA from Colorado State University, where she was the recipient of the 2019 Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Seneca Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Puerto del Sol, Ruminate, and elsewhere.

John McCarthy is the author of Scared Violent Like Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which won the Jake Adam York Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets 2015, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and TriQuarterly, among others. He is the 2016 winner of The Pinch Literary Award in Poetry. John is an Associate Editor at RHINO and lives in Illinois.

Gary McDowell‘s Aflame won the 2019 White Pine Press Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in Fall 2020. He is also the author of five other books, including, most recently, Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017). His new poems are forthcoming in, among others, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Cimmaron Review, and The Colorado Review.

Heather Myers is from Altoona, Pennsylvania. She has an MFA from West Virginia University and is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of North Texas. Her work has appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Palette Poetry, Reservoir, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2018 AWP Intros Awards.

Therí A Pickens, PhD has written two monographs including Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke 2019). You can find her on Twitter (@TAPPhD) and her website (www.tpickens.org). She is a Professor of English.

Katie Pyontek writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her work has been published in New Ohio Review and Poetry. She is an MFA candidate at Ohio State.

Jessie Roy holds an MFA from Syracuse University and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she serves as Fiction Editor for Cream City Review.  Her fiction has recently appeared in American Literary Review, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She grew up in western Kentucky and now lives in Manhattan with her wife.  Find her at www.jessie-roy.com

Lubna Safi is a writer and graduate student living in Berkeley, California. Her work has been published in a small number of literary journals including Guernica, TAB: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Exchanges Literary Journal, and is forthcoming an anthology of poetry by Arab American writers.

Brooke Sahni’s poetry and fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines such as Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Divining (Orison Books, 2020), which won the Orison Chapbook Prize. She is from Cleveland, Ohio but lives in New Mexico.

Salawu Olajide lives in Nigeria. He is the author of Preface for Living Homeland published under African Poetry Book Fund series and edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. His poems are also available at or forthcoming in Glass, Salt Hill, New Orleans Review, Agbowo, Transition, Waccamaw, Miracle Monocle among other venues. 

Rachel Stempel (she/they) is a queer Jewish poet and MFA candidate at Adelphi University. They are a staff writer at Up the Staircase Quarterly and EX/POST MAGAZINE and their work has appeared in/is forthcoming from The Nasiona, New Delta Review, SPORAZINE, Atlantis Magazine, Petrichor, and elsewhere.

Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing) and Lizzie, Speak (winner of White Stag Publishing’s 2018 MS contest). Her newest collection, FOREVERHAUS, will be released from White Stag in 2020. She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine, and she teaches an ongoing course on the witch in literature at Moravian College. You can find her work featured or forthcoming in Electric Literature, Conduit, Black Warrior Review, Gigantic Sequins, Bone Bouquet Journal, Fairy Tale Review, and more. For further information, please follow @kaileytedesco.

El Williams III is a Cave Canem fellow and MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University. A St. Louis native, he has received fellowships and scholarships from Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House and the Watering Hole. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, River Styx, Shade Literary Arts, Vinyl Poetry and Prose and elsewhere.

Stella Wong is a poet with degrees from Harvard and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Wong’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Colorado Review, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and the LA Review of Books. She is the author of AMERICAN ZERO (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and SPOOKS (Saturnalia Books, 2022).

Angelique Zobitz is the author of the chapbook ‘Love Letters to the Revolution’ forthcoming Fall 2020 from American Poetry Journal. She is a Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition Finalist, 2020 Best New Poets nominee and a two-time 2019 Best of the Net nominee. 

Widely published, Zobitz’s work has appeared in Sugar House Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Adirondack Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, Yemassee Journal, So to Speak, Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review and many others. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @angeliquezobitz and www.angeliquezobitz.com