Forklift, Ohio

Mary Biddinger’s most recent book of poems is O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press 2013). Two more collections, A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, and Small Enterprise, are forthcoming in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Sou’wester. She lives in Akron, Ohio, and edits Barn Owl Review and the Akron Series in Poetry.

Weston Cutter is from Minnesota and is the author of All Black Everything and You’d Be a Stranger, Too. He’s an assistant professor at the University of St. Francis and runs the book review website Corduroy Books.

Joe DeLong is a lecturer in the interdisciplinary SAGES program at Case Western Reserve University, and he holds a PhD in English and comparative literature from the University of Cincinnati. His poetry has appeared in Mid-American Review and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol.

Joseph Di Prisco has recent work in Zyzzyva, The American Reader, and Poetry Daily. His poems, book reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals. His third novel was All for Now (MacAdam/Cage, 2011), and his second book of poems was Poems in Which (Brunsman Prize). His new poetry manuscript is Eulogist on Call and contains the poems published here. His memoir, Subway to California (Rare Bird Books), came out in June 2014—just in time for Father’s Day. He has an unreliable grasp on the mysteries of marketing.

Kallie Falandays has poems published in PANK, Paper Darts, ILK, Black Warrior Review, Deluge, Menacing Hedge, Skydeer Helpking, The Dirty Napkin, burntdistrict, and Tupelo Quarterly. She edits Kenning journal and mojo magazine.

Amelia Ferguson is right-handed. She lives in Cincinnati.

John Findura holds an MFA from The New School. A finalist for the Colorado Prize in Poetry, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference contributor, and a guest blogger for The Best American Poetry, his poetry and criticism appear in journals such as Verse, Fugue, Fourteen Hills, Copper Nickel, RealPoetik, H_NGM_N, Jacket, and Rain Taxi. Born in Paterson, he lives in Northern New Jersey with his family.

Jennifer H. Fortin is the author of We Lack in Equipment & Control (H_NGM_N Books, 2013) and Mined Muzzle Velocity (Lowbrow Press, 2011). She lives in Upstate New York.

Jon Gertz, subpar skateboarder and avid collector of cool shirts, currently lives in Brooklyn and goes to Teachers College, Columbia University. Look for more of his work in The Lumberyard and Cavalcade.

Tyler Gobble is the scruffy half of Stoked and a multi-hat wearer for Magic Helicopter Press. His first full-length hunk of poems will be out next fall from Coconut Books. He runs the Everything Is Bigger reading series in Austin, Texas. More at tylergobble.com.

Sarah Green is a doctoral candidate in creative writing at Ohio University. Her poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, FIELD, H_NGM_N, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Best New Poets 2012, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. She lives in Athens, Ohio, where she recently adopted an orange cat.

Noriko Hara has received degrees from the University of Tokyo and the University of Pittsburgh. She taught Japanese language courses at the University of Cincinnati for several years before returning to her native Japan.

Gary Hawkins is a poet, teacher, and scholar. A letterpress chapbook, Who Do We Know Who Works? is forthcoming in 2014 from Trade Union Press. His poetry, pedagogy, and criticism have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Teaching Creative Writing in Higher Education, Emily Dickinson Journal, and other venues. He teaches and serves as associate dean at Warren Wilson College, and he thrills at having one of poetry’s most enviable addresses in Black Mountain, N.C.

Simon Jacobs is the author of SATURN, a collection of David Bowie stories out now from Spork Press. He may be found at simonajacobs.blogspot.com.

Krzysztof Jaworski was born in Kielce, Poland, in 1966, and has written over a dozen books, including Irksome Pleasures: Collected Poems 1988-2008 and, most recently, To the Marrow, an avant-garde novel about his experience with cancer. He has also published three monographs on the writing, Soviet imprisonment, and execution of the Futurist poet Bruno Jasieński. In the 1990s Jaworski played a central role in bruLion, the magazine that launched the careers of several of Poland’s most important post-Communist writers. He has also written avant-garde works for stage and screen. He remains one of the most provocative poets in Poland today.

George Kalamaras, Poet Laureate of Indiana, is the author of seven books of poetry and seven chapbooks, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011). He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990.

Stephanie Rosenbaum Klassen is the author of 6 nonfiction books, including The Art of Vintage Cocktails (Egg & Dart Press) The Astrology Cookbook (Manic D Press), and The Anti-Bride Guide (Chronicle Books). She has also contributed stories to several anthologies, including Virgin Territory (Masquerade Books), Electric (Alyson Books), and Beyond Definition (Manic D Press). A longtime resident of Northern California, she writes a weekly online food column for KQED’s Bay Area Bites. Pie and lipstick are her two favorite things.

Joshua Kleinberg is a barback, an MFA candidate in poetry and translation, and the curator (with Alexis Pope and Dana Jaye Cadman) of Banquet Reading Series in Brooklyn. His work has received awards from Ohio State University and The Academy of American Poets, and has been anthologized in Chorus: A Literary Mixtape (2012, MTV Books). A full list of his publications can be found at gentleslant.net.

Virginia Konchan is a writer living in Chicago. Her poems, stories, essays, criticism, and translations have appeared widely, in such places as in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and The Believer. She is co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, and regular contributor to The Conversant and Jacket2.

Ben Kopel is the brief elaboration of a tube, born in Louisiana but breathing in New York. He wrote VICTORY from H_NGM_N Books and is currently working on his next thought, possibly titled Sutras of Love & Hate.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of ROME (W.W. Norton/ Liveright) and Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE, all from Wave Books. She is an assistant professor of poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn.

BJ Love teaches at Savannah State University, co-hosts and curates Seersucker Shots, and produces the podcast Pretty LIT.

Sam McCormick is a poet from Cincinnati. The founder and editor of Trigger—a poetry journal set to the tune of firing off loudly and often—her work has appeared in H_NGM_N.

Meg McKeon holds an MFA in poetry from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in:Ghost Town; H_NGM_N; ILK Journal; Blackbird; Spork Press; LEVELER; andsmoking glue gun. She lives in Austin with her pup Tuna.

Erika Meitner is the author of three books of poems—most recently, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011), and Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Her poems have appeared in publications including Best American Poetry 2011, Tin House,jubilat, VQR, and The New Republic. Her next book, Copia, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2014. She’s currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program. 

JoAnna Novak has been publishing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction for the past eight years. Her prose has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Lydia Davis called her series of flash fictions, Something Real (dancing girl press 2010), “energetic, fast-paced, rich in strong, sensuous images... both wistful and tough, emotionally charged, and softened by a touch of humor—a pleasure to read.” She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Washington University, and is completing an MFA in poetry at UMass-Amherst this fall. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Web Conjunctions, DIAGRAM,Quick Fiction, Octopus, La Petite Zine, Alice Blue Review, Jerry, Drunken Boat,Action Yes, and La Fovea.

Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and holds an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College, Dublin and a Ph.D. in 20th Century British Literature from UNC-Greensboro. Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013. In 2010, she won a Discovery/Boston Review prize and was named a 2011 Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Matthew Olzmann’s first book of poems, Mezzanines, was selected for the 2011 Kundiman Prize and was published by Alice James Books. He’s currently a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in the undergraduate program at Warren Wilson College.

Alexis Orgera is the author of the books How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, and three chapbooks. Her poems, essays, and reviews can be found inBlack Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Drunken Boat, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, HTMLGiant, The Journal, jubilat, Memorious, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Sixth Finch, storySouth, and others. She lives in southwest Florida.

Benjamin Paloff is the author of two collections of poems, The Politics(Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011) and And His Orchestra (Carnegie Mellon, 2014). He is also the translator of several books and shorter works from Eastern Europe, most recently Marek Bienczyk’s Transparency (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012) and Andrzej Sosnowski’s Lodgings: Selected Poems (Open Letter, 2011). A former poetry editor at Boston Review, he is an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures and of comparative literature at the University of Michigan, as well as a fellow of the Stanford Humanities Center.

Morgan Parker’s first collection of poems, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, was selected by Eileen Myles for The 2013 Gatewood Prize and is forthcoming from Switchback Books. Recent poems are forthcoming from Tin House and Gigantic Sequins. A graduate of NYU’s creative writing MFA program and a Cave Canem fellow, she lives in Brooklyn and at morgan-parker.com.

Alexis Pope lives in Brooklyn. Her first book was selected for the Joanna Cargill First Book Prize, and will be published by Coconut Books in 2014. Poems can be found in Washington Square, Guernica, Octopus, Columbia Poetry Review, and RHINO, among others. She is the author of three chapbooks and curates BANQUET: A Reading Series alongside Joshua Kleinberg and Dana Jaye Cadman.

Zach Powers lives and writes in Savannah, Georgia. He is writing this bio himself, and writing it in the third person, which, to him, feels rather pompous. He is averse to pomposity and is really quite personable. You’d like him. Give Zach Powers a chance. Why do you have to be so judgmental? His work has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Phoebe, PANK, Caketrain, and elsewhere. He is the founder of the literary arts nonprofit Seersucker Live (SeersuckerLive.com). He leads the writers’ workshop at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, where he also serves on the board of directors. His writing for television won an Emmy. Get to know him atZachPowers.com.

Nate Pritts is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Right Now More Than Ever, and several chapbooks including Pattern Exhaustion from Smoking Glue Gun. Director & Prime Architect of the shadowy H_NGM_N organization, Nate lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Layne Ransom shamelessly loves Sting’s solo albums. She has a chapbook out on H_NGM_N called You Are The Meat, designs Stoked Journal, and is an MFA candidate for poetry in the New Writers Project at UT Austin. No one can tell her that The Soul Cages is not a good record.

Alexandra Reisner is a writer shaped by the waters of the East Coast, Gulf Coast, and the Danube River. Her work has appeared in the Columbia Current, Carolina Quarterly, Helix, and elsewhere. She is an expert procrastinator who hones her craft by designing jewelry, fostering dogs, practicing yoga, and making lists.

Christie Ann Reynolds is the author of Revenge for Revenge (Coconut Books, 2012) and a 2012 recipient of both a Poets & Writers Amy Award and a Summer Literary Seminars Editor’s Choice Fellowship in Lithuania. Her first chapbook, idiot heart was chosen for the 2008 New School Chapbook Contest. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches science and writing at a middle school.

David Rutschman is a Soto Zen priest. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, Seneca Review, Witness and many other journals. He lives with his wife and young son in Alameda, California.

Ken’ichi Sasō was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1968 and is the author of six books of poetry. All of these translations are of poems from his 2008 collection,The Planet of Hearts (Shinzō no hoshi).

Michael Schiavo is author of The Mad Song.

Jeff Sirkin grew up in Cincinnati. He writes on popular music and literature, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mandorla, Puerto Del Sol, theVolta and elsewhere. He currently teaches in the creative writing department at the University of Texas, El Paso, where he also co-curates the Dishonest Mailman Reading Series.

Nate Slawson is the author of PANIC ATTACK, USA (YesYes Books, 2011). He lives in Chicago and is the editor and publisher at THE NEW MEGAPHONE.

Shaelyn Smith currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Rob Talbert has worked in jails, bars, cruise ships, and bookstores and earned his MFA from Virginia Tech University somewhere in between. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Boxcar, Inkwell,Keyhole, Ninth Letter, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Sow’s Ear Review and others. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and numerous times for Best New Poets. His first book Jagged Tune is forthcoming from Mad Hat Press.

Ryan Walsh is the author of The Sinks (winner of the 2010 Mississippi Valley Poetry Chapbook Contest). His poems have appeared in Blackbird, Ecotone; FIELD; Ink Node; Narrative, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont and works at the Vermont Studio Center.

Joshua Ware lives in Cleveland, where he teaches at Case Western Reserve University and writes for Vouched Books. He is the author of Homage to Homage to Homage to Creeley (Furniture Press Books) and several chapbooks, most recently Imaginary Portraits (Greying Ghost Press), How We Remake the World(Slope Editions) with Trey Moody, and SDVIG (alice blue books) with Natasha Kessler.

Dean Young’s most recent book is Bender: New and Selected Poems.

Corey Zeller is the author of Man vs. Sky (YesYes Books, 2013) and You and Other Pieces (Civil Coping Mechanisms, forthcoming). His work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, The Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Diagram, Salt Hill, West Branch, Third Coast, The Literary Review, The Paris-American, New York Tyrant, New Orleans Review, Green Mountains Review, The AWL, The Rumpus, The Journal, PEN America, Chorus (MTV Books), among others. He currently works in crisis support at a facility for children and adolescents with mental and behavioral issues.