HAROLD ACKERMAN thinks photo art should try to escape cliché, propaganda, and advertising, if at all possible, but also hyperrealism and fantasy. He has published photo art most recently in Gravel and has cover art forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal. His gallery can be found online at briarcreekphotos.com.
HEATHER BELL ADAMS is the author of a novel, Maranatha Road (Vandalia Press, 2017), and short fiction appearing in The Thomas Wolfe Review, Clapboard House, Broad River Review, Pisgah Review, The Petigru Review, Pembroke Magazine, and elsewhere.
MARYAM BARRIE lives in a woods outside Ann Arbor and teaches English at Washtenaw Community College. Her recent chapbook is titled To Live in This Dark World and was published by Zetataurus Press. Her work has appeared in The Huron River Review, Belle Ombre, The Catamaran Literary Reader, and The Wayfarer.
TERRY HALL BODINE is a graduate of the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Recent publication credits include Roanoke Review, Split Rock Review, Scintilla, and Wraparound South. Terry lives in Lynchburg with her husband, Bill, and works with student life at the University of Lynchburg.
A native of southeast West Virginia, BEN E. CAMPBELL serves as professor of English at New River Community College in Dublin, Virginia. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in such publications as Yemassee, Now & Then, Roanoke Review, and Broad River Review (Volume 44). He resides in Lewisburg, West Virginia, with his wife and two daughters.
ABBY CAPLIN was a semifinalist for the 2018 Willow Run Poetry Book Award, a nominee for the 2018 Sundress Best of the Net Award, an honorable mention for 2017 Quercus Fall Poetry Book Award, an award recipient of the San Francisco Poets Eleven 2016, and a finalist for the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Alyss, apt, Canary, Catamaran, Dunes Review, Love’s Executive Order, Mudlark Flash, Paragon, Salt Hill, TSR: The Southampton Review, These Fragile Lilacs, Third Wednesday, Tikkun, and others. She is a physician and practices Mind-Body medicine in San Francisco. Caplin can be found online at abbycaplin.com.
CAROL FLAKE CHAPMAN, after a career as a journalist and author of nonfiction books, returned to her earlier love of poetry following the sudden death of her husband on a wild river in Guatemala. She found in poetry the language of healing and of deep connection to the natural world.
ROSEMARIE DOMBROWSKI is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona, the founding editor of rinky dink press, the co-founder and host of the Phoenix Poetry Series, and the curator of First Friday Poetry on Roosevelt Row. She is the recipient of five Pushcart nominations, an Arts Hero Award, the Carrie McCray Literary Award in Nonfiction, and a fellowship from the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. Her collections include The Book of Emergencies, The Philosophy of Unclean Things, and The Cleavage Planes of Southwest Minerals [A Love Story], winner of the 2017 Split Rock Review chapbook competition. Dombrowski can be found online at rdpoet.com.
JONATHAN LOUIS DUCKWORTH received his MFA from Florida International University. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction appears in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, Jabberwock Review, Superstition Review, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. His chapbook Book of Never is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press.
CALLISTA ECKERT is a senior English major and chemistry minor at Gardner-Webb University. In addition to the J. Calvin Koonts Poetry Award, Eckert also received multiple honors, including the George A. Christenberry Award (given by the Big South athletic conference for career GPA), Gardner-Webb University’s Who’s Who Student Leadership, Service, and Volunteerism Award, the Presidential Award for Women’s Soccer, the Dee “Doc” Hunt Academic Achievement Award, and the Univeristy Scholastic Award. Eckert will be working as a medical scribe, a referee, and a soccer trainer until she enrolls in medical school. Her hometown is Newnan, Georgia.
RENEE EMERSON was born in Tennessee and resides in Missouri. She has published poems in magazines such as Perspectives, Still, and Valley Voices, and currently teaches online courses for various universities. She is the author of Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014) and Threshing Floor (Jacar Press, 2016). She can be found online at reneeemersonpoet.com.
TERRI KIRBY ERICKSON is the author of five collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Broad River Review, North Carolina Literary Review, The Sun Magazine, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and many others. Awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, and an Atlanta Review International Publication Prize. She lives in North Carolina.
D FERRARA has been an active writer and ghost writer for more years than she cares to admit. Articles, essays and short stories are her continuing obsession, including appearances in The Main Street Anthology: Crossing Lines, East Meets West American Writers Review, Storytellers Magazine, The Broadkill Review, MacGuffin Press, Crack the Spine, Green Prints, Amarillo Bay, The Penmen Review, At the Inkwell, and RIMS Magazine. Arvin Lindemeyer Takes Canarsie won the Oil Valley Film Festival, was a Selected Screenplay (Finalist) in the Hollywood Blvd. Film Festival, and a Top Finalist in the ASU Screenwriting Contest. Her play Favor won the New Jersey ACT award for Outstanding Production of an Original Play, while Sister Edith’s Mission and Business Class were produced at the Malibu Repertory Company’s One Act Play Festival. Three of her full-length film scripts have been optioned. Her paintings have been shown in group shows, and included in several journals. She is the Editor of American Writers’ Review. Her paintings—watercolor on Yupo—have been featured in several shows. She recently received her MA in creative writing, where it joined her JD, LLM, and BA, amid the clutter of her office.
ROBERT FILLMAN’S chapbook November Weather Spell will be published in 2019 (Main Street Rag Publishing). In 2018, he was a Best of the Net nominee and a finalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award, the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest, and the Keystone Chapbook Contest. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, and others. A senior teaching fellow at Lehigh University, he lives in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife, Melissa, and their two children, Emma and Robbie.
IAN T. HALL was born and reared in Raven, Kentucky. He is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Tennessee, where he serves as the assistant poetry editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. He has published poetry and fiction in Kentucky Monthly Magazine, The Louisville Review, Heartland Review, and Modern Mountain Magazine, among others.
TEJAN GREEN is a cross-genre writer, editor and educator. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Platform Review, The Bookends Review, and Caribbean Writer, among other publications.
ERIC GREINKE’S poems and essays have been published in hundreds of American and international literary magazines since the early seventies, including Delaware Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Ginyu (Japan), The Journal (UK), Lake Effect, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, The Paterson Review, The Pedestal, Poem, Prairie Schooner, Prosopisia (India), and South Carolina Review. He can be found online at erickgreinke.com.
LINDA FLAHERTY HALTMAIER is an award-winning author and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Andover, Massachusetts. She is the winner of the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize for her full-length collection, Rolling up the Sky (2016). Her latest collection, To the Left of the Sun, was released in August, 2018 by Homebound Publications. Her work has earned numerous awards including first place in the Palm Beach Poetry Festival Competition, finalist honors for both the Princemere Poetry Prize and the Tucson Festival of the Book Literary Award, and been shortlisted for the Robert Frost Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared extensively in journals and anthologies including Ink & Letters, The Wild Word, Switchgrass Review, and more. Haltmaier lives on the North Shore of Boston with her husband and daughter.
CAROL HAMILTON has recent and upcoming publications in Commonweal, Bluestem, Southwestern American Literature, Pour Vida, Adirondack Review, The Maynard, Sanskrit Literary Magazine, U.S.1 Worksheet, Broad River Review, Homestead Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poem, Louisiana Literature, Haight Ashbury Poetry Journal, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pigeonholes Review, and others. She has published 17 books, including children’s novels, legends, and poetry, most recently, Such Deaths (from Virtual Arts Cooperative Press Purple Flag Series). She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.
RAYMOND P. HAMMOND is the editor-in-chief of both The New York Quarterly and NYQ Books. He holds an MA in English literature from New York University and is the author of Poetic Amusement, a book of literary criticism. He lives near Scranton, Pennsylvania, with his wife, the poet Amanda J. Bradley, and their dog Hank.
KRISTINA HEFLIN is an Arizona State University English major, based in Northern California. She has served on the editorial board of the literary journal Flumes and is activity coordinator for the Yuba College Literary Arts Club. She has been published in the literary journals Flumes, Canyon Voices, and Diverse Minds, the websites 2Elizabeths and the write launch, as well as the anthology The Beckoning. Future publications include Canyon Voices and Same. When she’s not writing or tutoring English at Yuba College, she enjoys horseback riding and Marvel comics.
STEPHEN HERMAN earned an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst. He taught creative writing and Poetry for 12 years at the City College of San Francisco. Herman published Night Visions in 2012 and was awarded the Gold Seal of Literary Excellence. He also won First Prize in Poetry in 2013 at the San Francisco Writers’ Conference. Herman also served for two years as a San Francisco Human Rights Commissioner.
MIKE HORAN lives with his family in the desert outside Palm Springs, California. He teaches elementary school during the day, writes and does dad stuff in the evenings, and practices kung fu in the spaces between. His work has appeared in Kindred Magazine for Anchor & Plume Press, Mad Swirl Magazine, and will appear in Good Works Review later this year.
MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. Johnson’s work has appeared in more than a thousand publications, and he edits and publishes numerous poetry sites. He is the editor-in-chief of the anthologies, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses, and Warriors with Wings: the Best in Contemporary Poetry.
PETER KAHN wallows among the mule deer, here on a small farm in southeastern Wisconsin, tucked in tight between the Pike River and Lake Michigan. His work has appeared in small, rarely read journals of literature.
Text(isles), NANCY KASSELL’S first book of poetry, and Be(longing), a chapbook, were published by Dos Madres Press in 2013 and 2016, respectively. The title poem of Parenthesis Enclosing Empty Space, a new chapbook manuscript, is forthcoming in Salamander, and The Trees of Cumberland Island is forthcoming in the anthology Awake in the World, Vol. 2 from Riverfeet Press. Kassell lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
R.J. KEELER was born St. Paul, Minnesota. He lived in the jungles of Colombia, South America, up to age twelve. He holds multiple degrees: undergraduate in math (North Carolina State University), graduate in computer science (University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, graduate in business (University of California Los Angeles), and earned a certificate in poetry (University of Washington). Keeler was awarded a Vietnam Service Medal. He has received a Whiting Foundation Experimental Grant and is included in the P&W’s Directory of Poets and Writers. He has been published in Ploughshares, VMI Beachcomber, Oak Literay Magazine, Typishly, and Deluge Literary and Arts Journal, among others. Keeler’s poetry collection Detonation will be published in December.
ANGELA KELLY’S most recent full-length poetry collection, Voodoo for the Other Woman (Hub City Press, 2013), is a SIBA nominee. Many individual poems have appeared in literary journals and several other award-winning chapbooks. Originally from Black Mountain, North Carolina, Kelly has won awards and fellowships from the South Carolina Arts Commission, South Carolina Academy of Authors, and the North Carolina Humanities Council. Kelly has had residencies at Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Sewanee Writers Conference, Hambidge Center, and the Vermont Studio Center.
CHRISTOPHER KUHL earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and one in music composition, as well as two masters of music degrees and a PhD in interdisciplinary arts. He taught English at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. He enjoys reading a wide array of literature, as well as philosophy and history, while his other interests include studying higher mathematics and classical Greek and Hebrew, as well as drawing and painting with acrylics. Kuhl is never bored.
After earning graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina, RICHARD LEBOVITZ taught college and high school English before entering the fields of journalism and professional conference planning. His poetry springs from his desire to seize on those fleeting moments of beauty the natural world delivers to our doorsteps and to share those experiences on an emotional level with his fellow human beings.
BRODIE LOWE has a BA in English from Western Carolina University. He has stories published in Mystery Tribune, The Bark Magazine, Strange Stories Magazine, Cultured Vultures, Quail Bell Magazine, Antithesis Journal, Frontier Tales, Gypsum Sound Tales, Mad Scientist Journal, and Coffin Bell Journal, and has a forthcoming poem in Arkansas Tech University’s Nebo: A Literary Journal. He was a finalist for Still: The Journal’s 2018 Literary Contest in Fiction, judged by author Wiley Cash. He is a recent alumnus of Spalding University’s MFA Community Workshop, taught by author Silas House.
MATTHEW MAFFEI is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where majors in creative writing. “My Father Plays Guitar” is a personal essay on understanding, learning to forgive, and knowing how to move beyond mistakes.
TASSLYN MAGNUSSON received her MFA in creative writing for children and young adults at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Room Magazine, The Mom Egg Review, The Raw Art Review: A Journal of Storm and Urge, and Red Weather Online. Her chapbook, defining, from dancing girl press was published in January 2019. She lives in Prescott, Wisconsin, with her husband and two kids and two dogs.
JOSH MAHLER lives and writes in Virginia, where he was educated at George Mason University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Plainsongs, the Evansville Review, Exit 7, Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere.
C. I. MARSHALL has an MFA in creative writing from California State University, Long Beach. Marshall was poetry editor for ARTLIFE Magazine, and poems have appeared in Spillway, RipRap, The Packinghouse Review, Beyond the Lyric Moment: Poetry Inspired by Workshops with David St. John, ELKE, Redheaded Stepchild, and Kakalak. A Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts and Weymouth Center for the Arts Writer-In-Residence, Marshall’s poem, “Myself As a Playboy Bunny” won the 2018 International Verve Poetry Festival Competition in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
PRESTON MARTIN has published, or has poems forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Tar River Poetry, Appalachian Heritage, Iodine, Chaffin Journal, Kakalak, Snapdragon and other journals. He has poems in Every River on Earth: Writings from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press), and other anthologies. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
In addition to two chapbooks, KEVIN J. McDANIEL is the author of a forthcoming poetry collection, Rubbernecking (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019). His poems have appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Artemis Journal, Broad River Review, Cloudbank, Free State Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Offbeat, and others. He lives in Pulaski, Virginia, a small town named for Count Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman who fought with George Washington during the Revolution.
JIM McDERMOTT lives with his family in Virginia. He is the author of a creative nonfiction book and is a recipient of the Bevel Summers Prize from Shenandoah.
MARY McGINNIS has been writing and living in New Mexico since 1972, where life has connected her with emptiness, desert, and mountains. Published in over 70 magazines and anthologies, she has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has published three full length collections: Listening for Cactus (1996), October Again (2008), and See with Your Whole Body (2016). A recent submission to a Lummox poetry contest (2017) won first prize, and publication of a chapbook, Breath of Willow.
DAVE McNAMARA is a writer living in Boston. He works as an English lecturer at the University of Massachusetts and occasionally tours with rock bands as a sound engineer.
ALAN MEYROWITZ retired in 2005 after a career in computer research. His writing has appeared in Eclectica, Existere, Front Range Review, Inwood Indiana, Jitter, The Literary Hatchet, Lucid Rhythms, The Nassau Review, Poetry Quarterly, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Shark Reef, Shroud, Spirit’s Tincture, and others.
SALLY STEWART MOHNEY’S poetry collection, Low Country, High Water (Texas Review Press, 2016), won the Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize: North Carolina. Other publications include A Piece of Calm (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Pale Blue Mercy (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her work has appeared in the Broad River Review, the Charlotte Observer, Cortland Review, James Dickey Review, North Carolina Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Town Creek Poetry, Verse Daily, Waccamaw Journal, The Reach of Song, Stone, River, Sky: An Anthology, The Southern Poetry Anthology: North Carolina, Winning Writers.com, and elsewhere. She has taken graduate courses at the University of Florida and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the recipient of the Jesse Rehder Writing Prize from the University of North Carolina. She was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry. A North Carolina native, she currently lives a thousand feet from the Chattahoochee River.
MARY LAMBETH MOORE is the author of Sleeping with Patty Hearst, a coming-of-age story set in small-town North Carolina during the 1970s. Author Anna Jean Mayhew, a winner of North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award, has praised the novel as “engrossing” and “masterfully written.” Mary is a former fiction editor of Carolina Wrenn Press (now Blair) in Durham, North Carolina. She works as a senior writer for a large non-profit organization in Durham, where she has produced Congressional testimony, executive speeches, opinion pieces and documentary scripts. Mary lives in Raleigh with her husband, Bill Gowan.
HALI MORELL is an actress, writer, and teacher. With a bachelor’s degree in acting and a minor in creative writing, she has written and performed two semi-autobiographical plays as well as a one-woman show. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Borfski Press, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Forge Journal, The Paragon Journal, Pendora Magazine, The Penmen Review, and Tower Journal. Hali has attended the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and studied with Karin Gutman, Monona Wali, Mark Travis, Terri Silverman, and Frank Megna. Alongside her writing partner, she helps run memoir writing/talking council workshops called The Missing Peace.
RAY MORRISON’S newest collection of short stories, I Hear the Human Noise, is now available from Press 53, as is his debut collection of short stories, In a World of Small Truths (Press 53, 2012). His short stories have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Ecotone, StorySouth, FictionSoutheast, Broad River Review, Carve Magazine, and others. Morrison lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
KATHY NELSON is the author of two chapbooks: Cattails (Main Street Rag, 2013) and Whose Names Have Slipped Away (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, and other print and online journals. Nelson lives in Fairview, North Carolina.
SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems (Cholla Needles, 2019). For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit him online at simonperchik.com.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, J. ROSS PETERS is Head of St. George’s Independent School in Memphis, Tennessee. His interests include photography, travel, hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and somewhat awkward guitar picking. His first collection of poems is entitled The Flood Is Not the River. Additionally, he contributed the forward and the photography for his wife’s book (upcoming from Punctum Press) on the Sacro Monte di Orta, a Franciscan pilgrimage site in Italy’s piedmont region.
FABRICE POUSSIN teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, San Pedro River Review, as well as other publications.
OLIVIA PRIDEMORE is a multi-dimensional artist and co-founder of Silver Needle Press. Her works have appeared, or are forthcoming in, Portland Review, Permafrost, Sand Hills, Bridge, The Ocotillo Review, The Raw Art Review, Round Table, Ampersand, and elsewhere. Olivia teaches writing courses at Austin Peay State University and enjoys spending time outdoors with her two dogs.
PHILL PROVANCE is the author of the poetry chapbook, The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky (Cy Gist, 2010), as well as the popular history, A Brief History of Woodbridge, New Jersey (The History Press, 2019). His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including The Baltimore Sun, The Crab Creek Review, decomP, and many others. He has received various honors and awards, including being named a finalist for the 2017 Crab Creek Review Poetry Contest by judge Diane Seuss. A graduate in poetry and fiction from West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA program, he lives in Woodstock, Illinois, where he and fellow poet Allison Eir Jenks co-parent the special-est little guy ever, their son, Ledger.
GREG RAPPLEYE’S poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, and other literary journals. His second book of poems, A Path Between Houses (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. His third book, Figured Dark (University of Arkansas Press, 2007), was co-winner of the Arkansas Prize and was published in the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His fourth book, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds, was published in the fall of 2018 by Dos Madres Press. He teaches in the English Department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
JOSEPH RASH is a senior English major at Gardner-Webb University. He is from Bostic, North Carolina.
ANN HARPER REED’S first novel, Element of Blank (which was self-published), was well received by critics. Her writing has also appeared in TAYO, Umbrella Factory, The MacGuffin, and Sou’wester Magazine, among others. Reed has taken many writing classes and attended countless conferences, and, like many writers, collected a wealth of professional experiences that inform her work, including stints as a heli-rappeller, a pastry chef, an electrician, a factory worker, a massage therapist, a firefighter, and a schoolteacher. Reed can be found online at annharperreed.com.
CLAIRE SCOTT is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam, and Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
MARIA SEBASTIAN is an American singer/songwriter and poet living in Clarence Center, New York. She also teaches public speaking and English in the SUNY system and plans to settle one day in Woodstock, New York. She can be found online at mariasebastian.com.
ELIZABETH CHILES SHELBURNE grew up reading, writing, and shooting in East Tennessee before graduating from Amherst College. She was a staff editor at The Atlantic, and her nonfiction work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, and Globalpost, among others. A graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program, her first novel, Holding On to Nothing, from which this story is drawn, is forthcoming from Blair in October 2019. She can be found online at ecshelburne.com.
ALLEN SMITH’S work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Broad River Review, Crucible, and Maryland Poetry Review, as well as in My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman, and his chapbook, Unfolding Maps. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his husband.
Duncan Smith’s poem “New Ground” was a finalist in the 2017 Ron Rash Award for Poetry. Smith is a librarian living in Durham, North Carolina. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned a BA in English and a MS in Library Science. “Fallout” is his first published work of fiction.
RACHEL SOBYLYA received her BA in English and history from East Tennessee State University in 2012, and she graduated from Dartmouth College’s MA liberal studies program in 2015. She currently lives in Katy, Texas, where she teaches high school English. Her work has appeared in Headstuff, West Texas Literary Review, and Gravel, among other publications.
MATTHEW J. SPIRENG’S book What Focus Is was published by WordTech Communications. His book Out of Body, published by Bluestem Press, won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award. An eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he won The MacGuffin’s 23rd Annual Poet Hunt (2018) and the Common Ground Review Poetry Contest (2015).
BONNIE STANARD draws on her rural upbringing and an interest in history to write novels, short stories, and poems with credits in publications such as The American Journal of Poetry, Wisconsin Review, Harpur Palate, The South Carolina Review, and The Museum of Americana. She has published six historical fiction novels and a children’s book. She lives in South Carolina, and can be found online at bonniestanard.com.
ROSE STRODE is a poet and essayist whose work has been published in The Gettysburg Review, Poet Lore, The Delmarva Review, Little Patuxent Review, and, most recently, in Waxwing. She is a recipient of the Gulick Fellowship at Valpariso University, and a student at George Mason University, where she is enrolled in the MFA program in poetry. Strode is also a volunteer gardener at a Buddhist Temple.
In addition to the Broad River Review, MAX STEPHAN’S writing has appeared in Appalachia, Christian Science Monitor, Cimarron Review, Main Street Rag, Kestrel, Kerf, Slipstream, Potomac Review, Blueline, and Louisiana Review. Currently he is wooing publishers with a manuscript entitled Alice Said—the first book-length collection of poems, by one author, based on mycology. For the last 20 years, Stephan has also been piloting the most comprehensive textual criticism of poet Mary Oliver to date. The foci of his research include the tedious archival processes of collecting, documenting, and analyzing Oliver’s original journal publications as far back as the 1950s. The ever-growing collection of artifacts (500+) is the largest of its kind nationwide. Stephan teaches at Niagara University, specializing in contemporary American poetry. Max can be found online at maxstephan.net.
JESSICA LYNN SUCHON is the author of Scavenger, winner of the 2018 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2019. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Willow Springs, Yemassee, Muzzle Magazine, and RHINO Poetry, among others. Her librettos have appeared or are forthcoming in works by Stephanie Ann Boyd for the Eureka Ensemble, EKMELES vocal ensemble, Æpex Contemporary Performance with the Dark Sky Project. She was a 2016 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, a finalist for the 2017 Indiana Review Prize, and has received nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Jessica lives in Nashville with her husband, Josh Myers, and their dog, Gracie.
MARK SVENVOLD, winner of the 2018 Rash Award in Poetry, also won the 2018 Spoon River Editor’s Choice Award for Poetry, selected by Li-Young Lee, and the 2018 Beyond Baroque Poetry Award, selected by Matthew Zapruder. He teaches creative writing at Seton Hall University and lives in New York City.
NANCY SWANSON is a retired educator living outside Brevard, North Carolina. Her poetry has been published in Comstock Review, Chattahoochee Review, English Journal, and South Carolina Review. She was also the 2018 winner of the Sidney Lanier Poetry Contest.
KELLY TALBOT has edited books and digital content for 20 years, previously as an in-house editor for John Wiley and Sons Publishing, Macmillan Publishing, and Pearson Education, and now as the head of Kelly Talbot Editing Services. His writing has appeared in dozens of magazines. He divides his time between Indianapolis, Indiana, and Timisoara, Romania.
JO BARBARA TAYLOR lives near Raleigh, North Carolina. Her poems, fiction and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines and anthologies. She has published four chapbooks and most recently (2016) a full-length collection, How to Come and Go (Chatter House Press). She chairs the workshop committee for the North Carolina Poetry Society and leads a poetry writing ‘funshop’ through Duke Continuing Education.
JOHN THOMSON’S novel A Small Boat at the Bottom of the Sea was published by Milkweed Editions. His stories have appeared in several literary magazines, including Collateral, Terrain, The Raven’s Perch, and others. His story “Out of Good Ground” won Terrain’s 2018 prize for fiction. He and his wife live in Northern California, close to their two grown daughters.
RACHEL TRAMONTE lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Bluestem Magazine, The Broken Plate, Common Ground Review, Door is a Jar, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jelly Bucket, Slab, These Fragile Lilacs, and Third Wednesday. She received her MA in English and creative writing from Binghamton University. She lives and writes in Cleveland, Ohio, with her partner and their two daughters.
JASON GORDY WALKER, a staff member of Birmingham Poetry Review, teaches English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His poems and stories have been published in Measure, Confrontation, Monkeybicycle, Poetry South, Hawaii Pacific Review, Town Creek Poetry, and others. Recently, he has received scholarships from the West Chester Poetry Conference and Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference.
BRUCE ARLEN WASSERMAN assembled his first poetry manuscript at the age of seventeen. He later farmed and worked as a blacksmith and as an editor before and through graduate school. In 2016, his poem “The Wet on Milan Street” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2017, his poem “Elegy for My Father” appeared in the Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology, and a short story “The Almost Living” was selected as a semi-finalist for the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers. More recent work appears the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review and the Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology, 2018. Wasserman received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he served as a graduate assistant, and is a book critic for the New York Journal of Books and the Washington Independent Review of Books. At other times, he performs as a musician in a band, trains horses on occasion, works as a dentist in clinical practice, and creates visual art as a potter. His work can be found online at brucearlenwassermanstudio.com.
C.D. WATSON is a former professional genealogist with deep roots in the Southern Appalachians and the author of nearly two dozen novels, including Tempered (published under the name Lucy Varna), a finalist in the 2015 Maggie Award for Excellence, sponsored by the Georgia Romance Writers.
NICHOLAS A. WHITE grew up near Charlotte, North Carolina, and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Clemson University. He’s currently an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and his stories have appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Necessary Fiction, Prime Number Magazine, Main Street Rag, Pithead Chapel, and other publications. White can be found online at nicholasawhite.com.
JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. A thirteen-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Philip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: The Yale Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
LESLIE WILLIAMS is the author of the collection Even the Dark (2019), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, and Success of the Seed Plants, winner of the Bellday Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, and many other magazines.
SETH WIECK, winner of the 2018 Rash Award in Fiction, grew up on a dryland farm in a region that receives less than twenty inches of rain per year. His father counseled him to leave agriculture, so now he teaches high school literature and remodels houses. He lives in Amarillo with his wife and three children. His stories, poetry, and essays can be found in various publications, including Narrative Magazine, Curator, and Fathom Magazine.
NANCY H. WOMACK previously served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, North Carolina. She is a past winner of the North Carolina Poetry Council’s James Larkin Pearson Award for Free Verse. Her poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including the Broad River Review, Kakalak, The Widows’ Handbook (Kent State University Press), and Widow’s Words (Rutgers University Press). She lives in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, where she enjoys reading, writing, gardening, and entertaining family and friends.
DAVID XIANG currently studies at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He started writing poetry as a freshman in high school, after attending the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. In 2015, he was selected as a National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. He gave his inaugural poetry reading at the White House at the invitation of former First Lady Michelle Obama, and has shared his experiences with poetry at high schools and conferences all over the nation. At Harvard, he has taken classes with Josh Bell and Jorie Graham, and is on the poetry board at The Harvard Advocate. He has been recently published in the Cordite Poetry Review and the Bluffton Literary Journal.