Forklift, Ohio

Noor Al-Samarrai is a poet from California and is currently based in Amman, Jordan where she is working on a collection of poetry about mid-20th century Baghdad with the support of a Fulbright grant. She just moved to a neighborhood where people keep giving her free bananas and she finds this very exciting.

Rachel Z. Arndt is an essayist and poet. She received MFAs from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Quartz, The Believer, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.

Jake Bauer is an MFA candidate at The Ohio State University, where he also serves as a poetry editor for The Journal. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Bennington Review, and RHINO, among others.

Ally Covino is a graduate of the New Writers Project and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. She lives in San Francisco.

Jacob Chapman lives in Amherst, Mass. with his family.

Nick Demske lives in Racine, Wis. and is a children’s librarian at the Racine Public Library. He is the author of a self-titled collection of poems which won the 2010 Fence Modern Poets Series. He is also the author of a chapbook called Skeetly Deetly Deet (Strange Cage Press, 2012). For the past 8 years, Nick has curated the BONK! poetry and music series in Racine. He barely ever blogs at nickipoo.wordpress.com.

JM Farkas’s work has been published in Hanging Loose and is forthcoming in <, i>Painted Bride Quarterly.

Charlene Fix is the author of Flowering Bruno, a dog-besotted collection of poems with illustrations by CCAD’s philosophy professor Susan Josephson (XOXOX Press 2006, finalist for the 2007 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry), Mischief (poems, Pudding House Press 2003), Charlene Fix: Greatest Hits (poems, Kattywompus Press 2012), Harpo Marx as Trickster (critical study of Harpo in the thirteen Marx Brothers’ films, McFarland 2013), and Frankenstein’s Flowers, (poems, CW Books 2014). Charlene co-coordinates Hospital Poets at the Ohio State University Hospitals, is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, is mentoring a high school poet for Ohio’s first poet laureate, Amit Majmudar, and is longing for another dog. She is an Emeritus Professor of English at Columbus College of Art and Design.

April Freely’s work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Seneca Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the Ohio Arts Council, Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass. She currently serves as an assistant poetry editor at DIAGRAM.

Brandi George‘s first collection of poetry, Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) won the gold medal in the 2015 Florida Book Awards. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Columbia Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, and Prairie Schooner, also winning first place in the Dana Awards and the Zone 3 Poetry Awards. She has been awarded residencies at Hambidge Center for the Arts and the Hill House Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design, and she attended the Sewanee Writer’s Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. She currently teaches at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers.

Peter Grandbois is the author of seven previous books, the most recent of which is, The Girl on the Swing (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2015). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over sixty journals, including, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Prairie Schooner, and have been shortlisted for both Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is a senior editor at Boulevard magazine, fiction co-editor at Phantom Drift, and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.

From Black Mountain, North Carolina, one of the most enviable addresses in poetry and art, Gary Hawkins writes poems, writes prose on poetry, draws (lately flora and bottles of old medicine), and works in letterpress, including editing and producing Croquet, an occasional letterpress broadside delivered as a postcard. His debut collection of poetry, Worker, appeared from Main Street Rag in 2016.

Andrew Hemmert’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Hunger Mountain, Natural Bridge, and Connotation Press.

Heather Hughes hangs her heart in her native Miami and her current town of Somerville. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Vinyl Poetry, and Whiskey Island, among others. She is a contributing writer for Mass Poetry online and a letterpress printer. She MFA-ed at Lesley University and ALM-ed at Harvard University Extension School. Find her at birdmaddgirl.com.

William James is a poet, punk rocker, and train enthusiast from Manchester, N.H. He’s the founder and editor-in-chief of Beech Street Review, a contributing editor for Drunk in a Midnight Choir and the author of “rebel hearts & restless ghosts” (Timber Mouse, 2015). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Stirring, Fourth & Sycamore, SOFTBLOW, Word Riot, Hobart, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @thebilljim or at williamjamespoetry.com.

Joseph Johnson is from Missoula, Mont. He’s enrolled in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst, and currently splits his time between western Massachusetts and the general West.

George Kalamaras, former poet laureate of Indiana (2014-2016), is the author of fifteen books of poetry, eight of which are full-length, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011) and The Mining Camps of the Mouth (2012), winner of the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM Chapbook Award. He is professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990. 

Josh Kalscheur is the author of Tidal, which won the 2013 Four Way Books Levis Prize and was published in Spring 2015. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill and Horsethief among others. He was the Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at UW-Madison for 2015-16, and is now a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at SUNY-Fredonia.

Dan Kaplan is the author of Bill’s Formal Complaint (The National Poetry Review Press, 2008) and the bilingual chapbook SKIN (Red Hydra Press, 2005). His work appears in VOLT, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Washington Square, the anthology Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton & Co.), and elsewhere. He is managing editor and poetry co-editor of Burnside Review and Burnside Review Press. He lives in Portland, Ore.

Gloria Keeley is a graduate of San Francisco State University. She collects old records and vintage magazines. Her work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Chiron, The MacGuffin, Slipstream and others.

Caroline Knox has published nine books: The House Party and To Newfoundland (both Georgia), Sleepers Wake (Timken), A Beaker : New and Selected Poems and He Paves the Road with Iron Bars (both Verse), and four from Wave Books – Quaker Guns, Nine Worthies, Flemish, and To Drink Boiled Snow. He Paves the Road with Iron Bars won the Maurice English Award 2005; Quaker Guns received a Recommended Reading Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She was an NEA Fellow in 1987 and a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow in 1996 and 2006. Her work has appeared in American Scholar, A Public Space, The Baffler, Harvard, New Republic, Paris Review, Poetry (whose Bess Hokin prize she has won), Times Literary Supplement, Tin House, Yale Review, and elsewhere.

Noelle Kocot is the current poet laureate of Pemberton, N.J. and the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Phantom Pains of Madness.

C.J. Miles is the author of What Is Anything Without Pandas (Ampersand Books, 2017). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Jet Fuel Review, Forage, Moonglasses Magazine, Five 2 One Magazine, and Unbroken, among others.

Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer. His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010. He is the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show, a co-founder of BACKLASH PRESS, and the editor of RASPUTIN: A Poetry Thread (a literary journal of poetry).

Tom Paine’s poetry is upcoming in The Nation, Fence, Green Mountain Review, Epiphany and elsewhere. A Boy’s Book of Nervous Breakdowns, a new collection of stories, was published in October by LSU. Stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The O. Henry Awards andThe Pushcart Prize. His first collection, Scar Vegas (Harcourt), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Pen/Hemingway finalist. He is an associate professor in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire.

Benjamin Palmer grew up in Wales but has spent much of his adult life in Spain and Mexico. He works as a translator and DJ, and makes music under the alias Be Brave Benjamin. He has an MA in creative writing from Swansea University. His poetry has appeared in New Welsh Review and Wales Arts Review, and was recently commended in The Interpreter’s House Poetry Competition.

Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UNC Greensboro. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, Parcel, The Journal, Thrush, Nashville Review, Redivider, Fugue, and others. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, and her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize.

Kiki Petrosino is the author of Witch Wife (forthcoming, 2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009). She is an associate professor at the University of Louisville, where she directs the creative writing program.

A Utah native, Chris Philpot is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Maryland where he has taught courses in both academic and creative writing. His poems have appeared in the Columbia Poetry Review, Beecher’s Magazine, Word Riot and elsewhere. He lives in Oakland, Calif.

Michael Pontacoloni’s poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro and lives in Connecticut, where he works for a software company and operates a vintage menswear subscription service.

Michael Robins is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently In Memory of Brilliance & Value (Saturnalia Books, 2015). He teaches literature and creative writing at Columbia College Chicago. For more information, visit michaelrobins.org.

Ruben Rodriguez is a MFA student at the University of New Mexico where he studies poetry. He is the fiction editor of The Great American Lit Mag and author of the chapbook We Do What We Want (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2015). His poetry has been deemed fit for consumption by Passages North, Beecher’s, Superstition Review,Potomac Review, Clackamas and others. You can find him at rubenstuff.com.

David Rutschman is a SŌtŌ Zen priest and a hospice grief counselor. His first collection, We Were So Hungry, is forthcoming from Forklift Books. He lives in California with his wife and two young children.

Deborah Schwartz’s chapbook of poems, A Girl Could Disappear Like This was published by Kattywompus Press (2015). Most recently her poetry can be found in The Pittsburgh Review (forthcoming), Slippery Elm Literary Journal, The Printer’s Devil Review, eclectica, La Casa De Cinco Mujeres Literary Review, and White Whale Review. She teaches at Bunker Hill Community College and Bentley University.

Lauren Shapiro is the author of the poetry collection Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013) and the chapbook Yo-Yo Logic (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2012). She is an assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jacob Strautmann’s poems have appeared in Salamander Magazine, The Boston Globe, Agni Online, The Appalachian Journal, Solstice, Jam Tarts, Quiddity, and most recently The Harlequin. He is a contributing editor for Salamander Magazine. He teaches creative writing at Boston University, where he is also the Managing Director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

Rosalynde Vas Dias is the author of Only Blue Body from Anhinga Press. Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Cincinnati Review, West Branch, The Pinch, Laurel Review, and elsewhere.

Julia Wendell’s most recent poetry collection is Take This Spoon, from Main Street Rag Press. She is the author of a memoir, Finding My Distance. She has recently moved to South Carolina with her husband, poet Barrett Warner, and has poems forthcoming in Muse/A Journal, JMWW, and Prelude. Her poem, “A Beautiful Day to be Buried,” was winner of the 2015 Consequence Magazine Poetry Prize.

Dustin Williamson is a poet and the publisher of Rust Buckle Books. He is the author of a number of chapbooks, including Obstructed View (Salacious Banter) and Cab Ass’n (Lame House). Recent work has appeared in The Recluse.