Forklift, Ohio

Skylar Alexander is a writer, teacher, and freelance designer living in Iowa City. She serves as the assistant director of the Young Emerging Writers Program (Midwest Writing Center – Rock Island, Ill.) and as vice chair of the Iowa Youth Writing Project’s Community Advisory Council (Iowa City). Her writing has appeared in Hobart, PromptPress, and Poetry City, USA. She received her BA in English and entrepreneurial management from the University of Iowa in May 2015.

Anne Barngrover is the author of Brazen Creature (2016 Editor’s Choice Selection, University of Akron Press), Yell Hound Blues (Shipwreckt Books, 2013) and co-author, with poet Avni Vyas, of the chapbook Candy in Our Brains (CutBank, 2014). Her poems have appeared in North American Review, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, and Indiana Review. She earned her MFA from Florida State University and her PhD in English and creative writing from University of Missouri. She currently lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Michael Bazzett is the author of three books of poems: You Must Remember This, (Milkweed, 2014), Our Lands Are Not So Different, (Horsethief, 2017) and The Interrogation, (Milkweed, 2017). His verse translation of the Mayan creation epic, The Popol Vuh, is forthcoming from Milkweed. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children. 

Partridge Boswell is the recipient of the 2017 Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize for his poem “Flying home after the protest.” He is the author of Some Far Country, winner of the Grolier Poetry Prize. His poems have surfaced in The Gettysburg Review, Salmagundi, The American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review and Hayden’s Ferry Review. Co-founder of Bookstock literary festival and the poetry/music group Los Lorcas Trio, he teaches at Burlington Writers Workshop.

TR Brady is from the Arkansas Delta. She’s an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and assistant poetry editor for Profane. Her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Tupelo Quarterly, If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration, and Arkana.

Hannah Oberman-Breindel’s work has appeared in The Literary Review, Connotation Press, Best of the Net, Court Green, Muzzle, BOXCAR, and Thrush. She is a two-time fellowship recipient from the Vermont Studio Center, has been granted a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and won an Agha Shahid Ali Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She completed her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was poetry editor of Devil’s Lake. Now she lives in Brooklyn, teaches high school English in the Bronx, and spends most of her time on the subway, in transit.

Steve Castro’s poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily: Web Weekly Features, Hobart, and The Broken Plate. A recent interview by the Chicago Review of Books is forthcoming. 

Grady Chambers was born and raised in Chicago, and is currently living in either Oakland, New York, or Philadelphia. He was a 2015-2017 Stegner Fellow, and his poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Diode, Ninth Letter, Midwestern Gothic, The Adroit Journal, and Devil’s Lake. 

Jacob Chapman lives with his family in Amherst, Mass.

Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, his poems have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and River Styx.

Brian Clifton lives in Kansas City, Missouri. He co-edits Bear Review. His work can be found in: Guernica, Barrow Street, Salt Hill, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, and BOAAT.

Franklin K.R. Cline is a PhD Candidate in English-Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, a member of Woodland Pattern Book Center’s Board of Directors, and the book reviews and interviews editor for cream city review. His first book, So What, is available via Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.

Tali Cohen is an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. She has never done a cartwheel in her entire life.

Catherine Esther Cowie is a 2017 Callaloo Writing Workshop graduate. Her work has been featured in Public Pool, Rock & Sling, and Bird’s Thumb. Originally from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Catherine now resides in Wisconsin.

Dorsey Craft holds an MFA from McNeese University, where she was awarded the Joy Scantlebury Prize for her poetry. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, CALYX, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Salamander, and Vinyl. She is currently a PhD student in poetry at Florida State.

Kayla Czaga is the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On, which won The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best debut collection by a Canadian poet, and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry. In 2015, she published Enemy Of The People, a chapbook about Stalin, with Anstruther Press. She holds an MFA from UBC and currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

James D’Agostino was born prematurely in Chicago, where he later received a BA from Loyola University. He took an MFA from Indiana University, and is completing a PhD at Western Michigan University. His poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, Conduit, Green Mountains Review, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), and Denver Quarterly. He currently lives in Missouri with his wife, the poet Karen Carcia.

Cassie Donish is the author of the poetry collection Beautyberry. Poetry editor for The Spectacle, she earned her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she received an Olin Fellowship and served as the Junior Fellow in Poetry from 2016 to 2017. Her writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Best New Poets, Colorado Review, jubilat, the Gettysburg Review, Sugar House Review, Sixth Finch, BOAAT, and KROnline. She holds degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Washington, and grew up in South Pasadena, Calif.

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow has new poetry appearing in The Plume Anthology of Poetry 5 Live Encounters, Santa Clara Review, South Dakota Review and The Texas Review. Poems are forthcoming from Fulcrum and Salamander. Her second full-length poetry collection, Horn Section All Day Every Day, is forthcoming in February 2018, from Salmon Poetry.

Lathan Ehlers is a poet and Iowa native. He received his BA in English-creative writing from The University of Iowa and his MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Ask him about memory if you want to spend an afternoon ruining your childhood.

Noah Falck is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (2012) & Celebrity Dream Poems (2013). He lives in Buffalo, New York. For more information, visit noahfalck.org.

JM Farkas has work published in Boxcar Poetry Review, Rust+Moth, Hanging Loose, The Westchester Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly.

Dobby Gibson has a new book, Little Glass Planet, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2019.

Benjamin Gucciardi’s poems have appeared in Orion Magazine, Radar Poetry, Chautauqua, upstreet, Terrain.org, and The California Journal of Poetics. He was recently nominated for Best New Poets 2017, and U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera chose his poem ‘Border Angels’ as a finalist for the Santa Ana River Review poetry contest.

Matthew Guenette is the author of three poetry collections: Vasectomania (University of Akron Press, 2017), American Busboy (2011), and Sudden Anthem (Dream Horse Press, 2008). He is also the author of the chapbook Civil Disobedience (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017). He's had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hessen-Wisconsin Fellowship. A graduate of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University, Matt currently teaches composition and creative writing at Madison College in Madison, Wis., where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a 20-lb. cat named Butternut.

Jeff Gundy’s seventh book of poems, Abandoned Homeland (Bottom Dog, 2015) was a finalist for the Ohioana Poetry Award, and he was named Ohio Poet of the Year for Somewhere Near Defiance (Anhinga, 2014). Recent poems and essays are in The Georgia Review, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Christian Century, Image, Artful Dodge, and Cincinnati Review. His most recent book of essays is Songs from an Empty Cage: Poetry, Mystery, Anabaptism, and Peace (Cascadia, 2013). He teaches at Bluffton University in northwest Ohio and spent a recent sabbatical at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Kelsey Marie Harris is a poet in less than the traditional sense. Her work is often experimental, generally offensive, and usually foaming at the mouth. She reps the Midwest. Ask her why she loves Racine.

Dave Harrity’s writing has appeared in Verse Daily, Memorious, Revolver, SAND, Copper Nickel, Confrontation, and Softblow. His recent books are These Intricacies (Cascade Books, 2015) and Our Father in the Year of the Wolf (Word Farm, 2016). The recipient of an Emerging Artist Award from the Kentucky Arts Council and a William Alexander II and Lisa Percy Fellowship from the Rivendell Writers’ Colony, he lives in Louisville, Ky. with his wife and children. Reach out via daveharrity.net.

Marty Hebrank lives in Durham, N.C. She studied poetry at the University of Arizona and works as a software tester.

Tara Estella Jay is a poet and essayist from Indiana, currently living in Ann Arbor, Mich., with a miniature schnauzer named Phoebe. Tara recently received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and she is the editorial director of The Index, an imprint of Wolverine Press, the University of Michigan’s letterpress studio. She grew up in trailer parks.

Joshua Johnston was born and raised in Caneyville, Ky. His work has appeared in publications such as Sprung Formal, Ninth Letter, Hobart, and Word Riot. He is co-founding editor of Frontier Slumber and lives in Bloomington, Ind., where he recently graduated from Indiana University’s MFA program.

Julia Kinu is a queer Japanese American poet based out of Tucson, Ariz. She is the head editor of a local literary zine with the grass roots organization Words on the Avenue, and also reads for Sonora Review literary magazine at the U of A. She has had her work published by Leopardskin & Limes online journal, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

Caroline Knox has published nine books, including The House Party (Georgia), Sleepers Wake (Timken), A Beaker: New and Selected Poems (Verse) and To Drink Boiled Snow (Wave Books). Her book He Paves the Road with Iron Bars (Verse) won the 2005 Maurice English Award, and Quaker Guns (Wave Books) 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, Times Literary Supplement, Tin House, and Yale Review.

Cameron Alexander Lawrence is a graduate of the University of Arizona and lives in Decatur, Ga., with his wife and three young daughters. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Image Journal, Wildness, and Saint Katherine Review.

Shayla Lawson is the author of the forthcoming I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia Books, 2018). Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Offing, Guernica, Salon, and ESPN. shaylalawson.com

As a child, Jeffrey Little was fond of eating small stones from the buffet of his familial driveway. Sadly, those days have passed. He is the author of The Hotel Sterno and The Book of Arcana (Spout Press), as well as Five and Dime (Rank Stranger Press), and three chapbooks on view at Mudlark (unf.edu/mudlark). He has recently published work in Rhino, DreamStreets, Pedestal Magazine, and the Broadkill Review.

Nate Logan was born and raised in Indianapolis. He is the author of Post-Reel (Locofo Chaps, 2017) and his work has appeared in a variety of journals, including glitterMOB, Pouch, and Yes, Poetry. He’s editor and publisher of Spooky Girlfriend Press.

Ella Marilla is from Lone Tree, Iowa. She is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she studied poetry as an Iowa Arts Fellow. She was the 2015-2016 Alberta Metcalf Kelly Fellow in poetry and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Fjords, The Saranac Review, West Branch, Tin House (online), and in Publication Studio’s Weekday Magazine. She runs a free breakfast diner.

Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of Sixth Finch. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, The Adroit Journal, Washington Square, and Birdfeast. He is the author of Situation Normal (Rye House Press) and Resuscitation Party (Racing Form Press).

Kate MacLam is an eighth generation Vermonter living in Minnesota. She received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she served as Co-Managing Editor of the Blue Earth Review and a host of KMSU’s Weekly Reader, an author interview radio program and podcast. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review and Willow Springs.

Farah Marklevits lives in Iowa and propels herself over the Mississippi River to teach and tutor in Rock Island, Ill. She has an MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, The Carolina Quarterly, and Salt Hill. Her manuscript was a finalist for the 2014 Milkweed Edition’s Lindquist and Vennum Prize and a semi-finalist for Crab Orchard’s First Book award.

Kyle McCord is author of five books including National Poetry Series Finalist Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders (Trio House 2016). His work has been featured in AGNI, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly. He’s received grants from the Academy of American Poets, Vermont Studio Center, and the Baltic Writing Residency. He serves as Co-Executive Editor of Gold Wake Press and lives in Des Moines, Iowa where he teaches at Drake University.

Becka Mara McKay directs the creative writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University, writes poetry, and translates Hebrew literature. Publications include a book of poems: A Meteorologist in the Promised Land (Shearsman, 2010), a chapbook of prose poems: Happiness Is the New Bedtime (Slash Pine Press, 2016) and three translations of Israeli fiction. Recent work appears in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Cream City Review, and Interim.

Erika Meitner is the author of four books of poems, including Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner, and Copia (BOA Editions, 2014). She is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she directs the undergraduate and MFA programs in creative writing.

Rachel Mindell is writer and teacher living in Montana. Her chapbook, A Teardrop and a Bullet, was released last year by Dancing Girl Press. Individual poems have appeared in Pool, DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, and BOAAT.

Aimee Noel writes from Dayton, Ohio, where she works as an educator and activist. She is a Count Consultant for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, highlighting gender disparity in the literary landscape. Her essays and poems have been featured on NPR affiliate WYSO and published in Great Lakes Review, Slippery Elm, and Nuclear Impact poetry anthology. She was Ohio Arts Council’s Summer Fellow at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center in 2016 and can eat her weight in pierogi. 

Elizabeth Onusko is the author of Portrait of the Future with Trapdoor (Red Paint Hill, 2016). Her work has appeared in Bennington Review, Best New Poets 2015, Conduit, DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch, and Poetry Northwest. She is the editor of Foundry and assistant editor of inter|rupture. elizabethonusko.com

Paul Osgerby lives in Iowa City, where he works a state job as well as at a local alt-weekly, Little Village Magazine. His poetry can be found online at Blast Furnace and H_NGM_N, and elsewhere in the physical world. He has helped curate several print-only poetry zines around town.

Alexandria Peary lives in southern New Hampshire and is the author of four books, including Control Bird Alt Delete. Her poems have recently appeared in the Yale Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Bombay Gin, New American Writing, Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, and Volt.

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of unconventionally linked short stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. A new novel, Silver Girl, is forthcoming from Unnamed Press in 2018. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Hudson Review, The Sun, Shenandoah, Arts & Letters, The Collagist, and Cincinnati Review. Pietrzyk is a member of the core fiction faculty at the Converse low-residency MFA program. She lives in Alexandria, Va. For more information: lesliepietrzyk.com

Derek Pollard is co-author with Derek Henderson of the book Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX Books). His poetry, criticism, creative nonfiction, and translations have appeared in Best of the Net, Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, Edgar Allan Poe Review, Pleiades, and Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak. He is assistant editor at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics. dpollard.squarespace.com

Paul Martinez-Pompa is the author of My Kill Adore Him.

Elizabeth A. I. Powell is the author of The Republic of Self a New Issue First Book Prize winner, selected by C.K. Williams. Her second book Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances won the Robert Dana Prize in poetry, was also a 2016 ‘Books We Love’ in The New Yorker and a Small Press Bestseller. She is editor of Green Mountains Review, and associate professor of writing and literature at Johnson State College. She is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing and Publishing. willylomansrecklessdaughter.com

Matt Prater, currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Virginia Tech, has had his appear in The American Journal of Poetry, The Moth, Appalachian Heritage, Crannog, and Cordite Poetry Review. He lives in Saltville, Va.

Liana Quill’s second book of poetry, as a flock of goats, was published in 2016 by Groundhog Poetry Press. Her first book, Fifty Poems, was selected by Dara Wier for the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize in 2010. Quill’s work has appeared in numerous publications including jubilat, 1913: a journal of forms, and blackbird. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and currently lives in the desert with her dog.

Maddy Raskulinecz lives in Baltimore, MD. Her fiction has appeared in Guernica, DIAGRAM, Tin House’s Open Bar, 3:AM, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions.

Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, and now teaches English at University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College in rural southern Ohio. Her chapbook The Lobes and Petals of the Inanimate was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Drunken Boat, Phoebe, and Radar Poetry.

William Repass, originally from Los Alamos, N. M., lives in Pittsburgh and works as a projectionist and film librarian. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Hobart, Flock, and Otoliths.

Heidi Reszies is a multidisciplinary artist living in Richmond, Va. Her poetry has appeared in BOAAT, Daily Gramma, LEVELER, Fog Machine, FORTH Magazine, La Vague Journal, SUSAN/the Journal, and Queen of Cups. She is the founder of Artifact Press, where she creates limited edition poetry chapbooks, broadsides, and pamphlets that are typeset by hand and letterpress printed.

Tyler S writes, teaches, and bartends in Redwood City, Calif. Before coming out West he collected his MFA in Boston, played bass in Polar Bear Club around the globe, wrote a television show into the ground in Palm Beach, and was born on the first day of school in Rochester, N.Y.

David Schaefer is a native of Wisconsin, and a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Texas-Austin, where he served as Poetry Editor for Bat City Review.

Seth Stephanz is currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was born in Kansas City and grew up in Madison, Wis.

Sarah Stickney’s poems have appeared in journals such as Rhino, The Portland Review, Mudlark, Bateau, B O D Y, and YesPoetry. Her manuscript Portico was selected by Thomas Lux as 2016 winner of Emrys Press’s annual chapbook competition. Stickney also translates Italian poetry holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire.

Barbara Buckman Strasko is the first Poet Laureate of Lancaster County, Pa. She is the 2009 River of Words Teacher of the Year and is the Poet in the Schools in the city of Lancaster. Her book of poems, Graffiti in Braille was published in 2012, and her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Rhino, Nimrod, Brilliant Corners, Ninth Letter and Poet Lore. Her poem “Bricks and Mortar” was chosen to be engraved in granite in Lancaster’s main square.

Tyrel J. Thompson is a recent graduate of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, currently living and working in Cincinnati.

Ellie Tipton is a writer in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, Zone3, The Bennington Review, Best New Poets, Pleiades, and Drunken Boat. You can read more of her poetry at ellietipton.com

Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, Nov. 2017). Her poetry has appeared in Agni, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, North American Review and elsewhere and is forthcoming in Salamander and Nimrod. She manages fundraising programs for non-profit organizations and lives in Manchester, Mass.

Emily Vizzo is a writer, editor and educator. Her chapbook Giantess is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2018, and she has been noted in Best American Essays 2013 and New New Poets 2015. With the poet Curtis Bauer, she has published translations from Spanish appearing with From the Fishouse.

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is due out from Tupelo Press in 2018. He lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as editor-at-large for The Kenyon Review.

Scott Wordsman’s poems and criticism appear in Coldfront, Colorado Review, Thrush, Ohio Edit, and Reality Beach. He has received nominations for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Scott lives in Jersey City, N.J., and teaches at William Paterson University.

Dean Young’s most recent book is Shock by Shock.

Jaime Zuckerman teaches and writes in the Boston area where she is a current MFA candidate at Emerson College. She is the author of the chapbook Alone in this Together (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Most recently, her poetry appears in DecomP, Fruita Pulp, Ghost Proposal, and Souvenir Lit. She is the poetry editor for Redivider and art director for Sixth Finch.