Forklift, Ohio

Rachel Z. Arndt is an MFA candidate both in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, The Awl, Pank, and elsewhere.

Michael Bazzett is the author of You Must Remember This, (Milkweed Editions, 2014), the winner of the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. His verse translation of the Mayan creation epic, The Popol Vuh, is forthcoming from Milkweed in 2016.

DeMisty D. Bellinger’s fiction and poetry has appeared in many places, including Driftless Review and Specter Magazine. Her short-short “Tiger Free Days,” first published in WhiskeyPaper, is on the Wigleaf’s Top 50 Short Fictions of 2014. She teaches creative writing at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and twin daughters.

Erica Bernheim holds degrees from Miami University, The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is associate professor of English at Florida Southern College, where she directs the creative writing program. Her first full-length collection, The Mimic Sea, was published by 42 Miles Press (Indiana University South Bend) in 2012. She is also the author of a chapbook, Between the Room and the City (H_NGM_N BKS, 2006) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Oxford Magazine, DIAGRAM, and The Iowa Review.

Emily Bludworth de Barrios’s debut book of poems, Splendor, is available from H_NGM_N Books. She is also the author of a chapbook, Extraordinary Power (Factory Hollow Press 2014). Recent work can be read in The Pinch, Tender, Jellyfish, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. Find Emily online at emilybludworthdebarrios.tumblr.com .

Tessa Bolsover is a writer, photographer, and musician from Portland, Oregon. She recently graduated from the University of Redlands Johnston Center For Integrative Studies with a BA in Creative Writing and Art. She is a member of the band Dearest, and an online junior editor for Ballad Of… Magazine.

Kirker Butler is a two time Emmy-nominated writer and producer who has written for Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, Galavant, and the upcoming Life in Pieces on CBS. His debut novel, Pretty Ugly was published by St. Martin’s Press in March of 2015. He is also the author of the graphic novel Blue Agave and Worm. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

Gary Clark was born and raised in New Haven County, Connecticut. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Drama from Dartmouth College in 1986, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Oregon in 1992. Since 1993 he has worked at the Vermont Studio Center (he currently serves as president) in Johnson, Vermont, where he lives with his wife and three children. 

Jeremy Clark is originally from Louisville, Kentucky. A Cave Canem fellow, his work also appears in Pluck! & Callaloo. He lives in Newark, New Jersey, where he is an MFA candidate & teaches undergraduate writing at Rutgers University.

Stella Corso writes and teaches in Western Massachusetts. She is a founding member of and core performer in the Connecticut River Valley Poets’ Theater, also known as  CRVPT.

Born in Washington D.C., Allison Donohue grew up in Centreville, Virginia. She received her BA in English, Creative Writing from Virginia Tech in 2012 where she also received the Creative Writing Poetry Award. Most recently, she completed her MA in English Literature with a focus on Poetics at Texas Tech University. In fall 2015, she starts her MFA at the University of Oregon. 

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of 13 books including All You Ask For Is Longing: Poems 1994-2014 (BOA Editions). He lives in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Adam Edelman is an MFA candidate in poetry in the New Writers Project at the University of Texas in Austin and the associate poetry editor for the Bat City Review. His hobbies include late French symbolist watercolor paintings and Star Wars Episode IV.

Juliet Escoria is the author of Black Cloud, published by both Civil Coping Mechanisms and Emily Books. She was born in Australia, raised in Southern California, and currently lives in West Virginia. For more, go to julietescoria.com.

Raymond Farr is author of Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths, 2011), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2012). His chapbook, Eating the Word NOISE! was published in February 2015 by White Knuckle Chaps. Another full length collection of poems Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav is due out from Blue & Yellow Dog in mid 2015. He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog, online at blueyellowdog.weebly.com.

Meg Freitag was born in Maine and currently lives in Austin, Texas. She is a recent graduate of the Michener Center for Writers, and was a finalist for UT Austin’s 2015 Keene Prize for Literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Narrative, Indiana Review, and Boston Review, among others.

Jules Gibbs lives and works in Syracuse, New York. Her first book, Bliss Crisis, was published in 2012 by The Sheep Meadow Press.

Dobby Gibson is the author of three books of poems, most recently It Becomes You (Graywolf Press). He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Karen Harryman’s poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Verse Daily, Raleigh Review and The Cortland Review as well as other print and online journals. Auto Mechanic’s Daughter, her first book of poetry, was selected by Chris Abani for the Black Goat Poetry Series Imprint with Akashic Books, 2007. Before moving to California she lived and worked in Kentucky for most of her life. She and her husband are currently raising their two daughters in Los Angeles.

Liz Hildreth has published poems, essays, and translations in various places. In Chicago, she writes commissioned poems on demand with the poetry group Poems While You Wait. She lives in Chicago and works with Johns Hopkins as an instructional designer.

Russell Jaffe is a teacher and artist living in Chicago. He is the editor of Strange Cage, a poetry press, and emcee of its reading series. His poetry books include This Super Doom I Aver (Poets Democracy, ‘13) and Introvert // Extrovert(Punk Hostage, ‘15). He is a contributing writer and Live Poeming editor for Queen Mob’s Teahouse. He loves his wife, Carleen Tibbetts, and daughter, Celestine, and collecting 8-tracks, and drinking seltzer.

Davy Knittle’s poems and reviews have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Rain Taxi, and Boston Review. His collaborations with Sophia Dahlin are forthcoming in Eleven Eleven. He lives in Philadelphia.

Jill Kolongowski grew up on a dirt road in Michigan. She teaches writing and is the managing editor at YesYes Books. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Sundog Lit, Southern Indiana Review, Lunch Ticket, Fugue, and elsewhere. She watches Chopped reruns and writes in a sunny apartment south of San Francisco.

Laurie Macfee is the Writing Coordinator at Vermont Studio Center, and Visiting Artist in Residence at the D’Arcy Thompson Zoological Museum in Dundee, Scotland, working on a digital book of redacted poems and images. Her past 20 years were spent in the visual arts, including museum education curator, gallery director, artist, and adjunct in book arts/photography. She recently received her MFA Poetry from Sierra Nevada College and is finishing a first manuscript, byte::sting.

Chris Mattingly is the author of the full-length collection Scuffletown (Typecast Publishing, 2013), and two chapbooks from Q Avenue Press, Ad Hoc (2010) and A Light for Your Beacon (2012). He earned a BA in English and Folklore from Indiana University, and an MFA in Poetry from Spalding University. In 2014, he co-founded Ledge Mule Press in Bloomington, Indiana with Dave Torneo and Ross Gay. Chris cultivates a great big garden and learned to cook from his Cajun grandma.

John A. McDermott, a native of Madison, Wisconsin, now lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he coordinates the BFA program in creative writing at Stephen F. Austin State University. His poetry has appeared most recently in Cobalt, the museum of americana, and Right Hand Pointing. His first collection, The Idea of God in Tennessee, is forthcoming from Aldrich Press.

Christopher Brean Murray’s manuscript The Specific Ocean was runner-up for Sarabande Books’ Kathryn A. Morton Prize in 2015. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Third Coast, Salamander, Puerto del Sol, Fou, andother journals. He is in the PhD program in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston, and he is the online poetry editor of Gulf Coast. 

John Myers’s other recent work is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Transom. He grew up in the Endless Mountains and lives in Tucson, Arizona. 

Vi Khi Nao was born in Long Khanh, Vietnam, in 1979. In 2013, she graduated with an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arkstark Memorial Awards in poetry. Vi’s work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She is the author of two novellas, Swans In Half-Mourning (2013) and The Vanishing Point of Desire (2011), and was the winner of 2015 Nightboat Poetry Prize.

Daniel Nester is the author most recently of Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects (99: The Press 2015). He is an associate professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.

Clifford Parody holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and lives in Lakeland, Florida, where he writes for the local newspaper, runs a small record label called Swan City Sounds, and hangs out with his wife, Jess, daughter, Charlie, and dog, Rogue. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Outlet Magazine and The Greensboro Review as the recipient of the 2015 Amon Liner Poetry Award.

Nina Puro’s work is forthcoming or recently appeared in Guernica, H_ngm_n, Indiana Review, the PEN American Poetry Series, Pleiades, Washington Square Review, and other places. She is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative and the author of a chapbook, Two Truths and a Lie (dancing girl press, 2015). The recipient of a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony, an MFA from Syracuse University, and a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, she lives and works in Brooklyn.

Jessy Randall’s poems, poetry comics, and other things have appeared in Asimov’s, McSweeney’s, Rattle, and West Wind. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.

Thibault Raoult lives in Athens, Georgia, where he edits RealPoetik and records/performs music as Historic Sunsets. His latest book of poems, Disposable Epics, was published by Caketrain Press.

Ross Robbins is the founder of Portland, Oregon’s Bone Tax Press and the Bone Tax Reading Series. His work has appeared in Assaracus, Hobart, and Vinyl Poetry. A chapbook, All in Black Blood My Love Went Riding, is available from Two Plum Press, and in November 2015, YesYes Books will release his full-length debut, Mental Hospital: A Memoir. Visit Ross by calling or texting 503.957.1974.

Beth Roberts is the author of Brief Moral History in Blue (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2001), and most recently published in The Volta. She works in marketing at Augustana College in Illinois.

F. Daniel Rzicznek is the author of two poetry collections, Divination Machine(Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2009) and Neck of the World (Utah State University Press, 2007), as well as three chapbooks, Nag Champa in the Rain (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2014), Vine River Hermitage (Cooper Dillon Books, 2011), and Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Orion, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and others. Also co-editor (with Gary L. McDowell) of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010), Rzicznek teaches writing at Bowling Green State University.

Claudia F. Savage has been a chef for people recovering from illness (a.k.a. the “food priestess”), a book editor, and a roller skating waitress. Her poems and interviews have been published in, or are forthcoming from, Water-Stone Review, CutBank, The Denver Quarterly, Iron Horse Review, Nimrod, Written River, The Buddhist Poetry Review, Cordella, and Bookslut. Find her at claudiafsavage.com and in her column about balancing parenting and art-making, “Leave the Dishes,” at voicecatcher.com.

Jeffrey Skinner spent the month of June in Switzerland on a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He was for part of that time Artist in Residence at the Hadron particle accelerator in CERN. This year he was given an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award. His latest book, Glaciology, won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. He has other recent poems forthcoming in Kenyon Review, POETRY, American Poetry Review, and Verse. He sings a little, but won’t dance. Don’t ask him.

Karen Skolfield’s book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry. New poems appear in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Pleiades, Waccamaw, and others; Skolfield is an Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Born in Philadelphia, Bruce Smith is the author of six books of poems, most recently Devotions (University of Chicago, 2011).

BJ Soloy just moved from the duplex wilderness of Missoula, Montana to Des Moines, Iowa and has poems published or forthcoming in Guernica, New American Writing, RHINO, FIELD, Colorado Review, Court Green, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and BOAAT, among others. 

Adam Tavel won the Permafrost Book Prize for Plash & Levitation (University of Alaska Press, 2015). He is also the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming) and the chapbook Red Flag Up (Kattywompus, 2013). Tavel won the 2010 Robert Frost Award and his recent poems appear or will soon appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Gettysburg Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and American Literary Review, among others. He can be found online at adamtavel.com.

Amy Jo Trier-Walker is a tree farmer in Indiana and the author of a chapbook, Trembling Ourselves into Trees, which is forthcoming from Horse Less Press in 2015. Her work can also be found in or is forthcoming from Handsome, LEVELER, A Bad Penny Review, Word For/Word, Timber, and Ilk, among others. She is the Art Editor at Black Tongue Review.

Lesley Ann Wheeler is a writer and teacher in Kansas City, Missouri. Her photo-essay “A Little Hell of Its Own” won the 2013 Bone Bouquet Experimental Prose Contest, and she has been a resident at the Wave Poetry Farm and Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA from the Pratt Institute, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Patrick Whitfill has work appearing or forthcoming in Threepenny Review, Subtropics, Southern Humanities Review, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, and in other venues, as well. Currently, he lives in South Carolina, where he co-curates the New Southern Voices Reading Series. 

Diana Whitney’s first book of poetry, Wanting It, was released in 2014 and became a small-press bestseller. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus, and many more. She’s grateful to have received a Promise Award in poetry from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and won the 2015 Women’s National Book Association poetry prize. A yoga teacher by trade, Diana blogs about the darker side of motherhood for The Huffington Post and runs a yoga studio in Brattleboro, Vermont, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and fourteen chickens. Find her online at diana-whitney.com.

Chelsea Whitton holds an MFA in poetry from The New School. Her poems have appeared in various print and web publications, including Sixth Finch, Bateau, Ilk, Cimarron Review, and WomenArts Quarterly. Raised in North Carolina, she currently lives in Ridgewood, Queens. 

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago native and the author of the forthcoming book of poems Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016). He’s also co-authored a book of poems and conversations called Prime (Sibling Rivalry Press). He is a Cave Canem graduate and has received a scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers Conference as well as a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, The Southern Review and others. Phillip received his MFA in Writing from the Washington University in St. Louis. He is the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry and the 2015-2017 Emory University Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry.