PERSONNEL
Joshua Aiken is a poet, essayist, and historian. His poetry has appeared in Assaracus, juked, The Winter Tangerine Review, TENDER LOIN, Nepantla, Fog Machine, and Cactus Heart. He was selected by Jane Yeh for the 2016 Martin Starkie Prize and and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. While serving as policy fellow at the Prison Policy Initiative, his research was featured in The New York Times. He is a Cave Canem fellow and has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. He is currently studying for his J.D./Ph.D. in history and African-American studies at Yale University.
Brandon Amico lives in North Carolina. He is the recipient of a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and the winner of the Southern Humanities ReviewHoepfner Literary Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, and Verse Daily. @amicob / brandonamico.com.
Tom Barlow is an Ohio writer whose works straddle the literary, crime and science fiction markets. Over 80 of his stories appear in anthologies such as Best American Mystery Stories 2013, Best of Ohio Short Stories #2, and Best New Writing 2011, as well as in Hobart,Temenos, Redivider, The Intergalactic Medicine Show, Crossed Genres, Mystery Weeklyand Manslaughter Review. He is also author of the science fiction novel I’ll Meet You Yesterday. tjbarlow.com
Katie Berta has her PhD in poetry from Ohio University, where she teaches English, and her MFA from Arizona State. Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, Washington Square Review, Blackbird,The Louisville Review, and BOAAT.
Bethany Breitland is an MFA candidate at VCFA. She won the 2018 Up North Poetry Prize and has been nominated for Best New Poets 2018. She currently lives with her two children, her partner, and her two cats in Atlanta.
Jacob Chapman lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. His chapbook Other Placesis forthcoming from Open Country Press, and he plays guitar in the band Camel City Drivers.
Samuel Cheney is from Centerville, Utah. He is a 2018 Sewanee Writers’ Conference MFA scholar, and his poems are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Western Humanities Review, and Whiskey Island.A teacher and MFA candidate in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Baltimore.
Charlie Clark’s poetry has appeared in New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace,Threepenny Review,and West Branch. He studied poetry at the University of Maryland, and lives in Austin, Texas.
Chelsea B. DesAutels serves as poetry editor of Gulf Coast. Her work appears in Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades,TriQuarterly, and Tupelo Quarterly. She received the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry, as well as grants from the Vermont Studio Center and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Chelsea is an MFA candidate at the University of Houston, where she teaches. She also holds degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Minnesota Law School.
Melissa Dickey is the author of two books of poetry, Dragonsand The Lily Will, both from Rescue Press. Her poetry, nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in jubilat,Puerto del Sol,theSpectacle,the Laurel Review, and Kenyon Review Online, among other publications. Born and raised in New Orleans, she now lives at a boarding school in Western Massachusetts, where she’s the primary caregiver of her four children, as well as an English teacher.
Michelle Dove is the author of Radio Cacophonyand writings that appear in Chicago Review, Guernica, DIAGRAM,The Awl, and Entropy. She works and teaches creative writing in the English Department at Duke University. In 2018, she released LURE, a sound and language collaboration with poet Brian Howe.
Merridawn Duckler is a poet, playwright from Portland, Oregon and the author of INTERSTATE(Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Juked, and Heron Tree, as well as in the anthologies Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetryand Weaving the Terrain: 100 Word Southwestern Poems(Dos Gatos Press). Fellowships and awards include NEA, Yaddo, Squaw Valley, SLS (St. Petersburg, Russia), Southampton Poetry Conference, and Wigleaf Top 50. She’s an editor at Narrativeand at international philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.
JM Farkas is the author of Be Brave, an erasure of Beowulf. Her second book, an erasure of Ovid, is forthcoming in 2019. jmfarkas.com
Adam Fell is the author of two books of poetry: Dear Corporation, and I Am Not A Pioneer. He is a Lecturer in English at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, and has just completed work on his first novel, Daughter of the Hatchet.
Amelia Ferguson was born in Portland, Oregon and has since resided in various parts of Oregon, Utah, Texas, Cincinnati, New York and Kentucky. She graduated from The Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2015 and is currently pursuing an MFA at Bennington College’s Low Residency Seminar. Her work appears sporadically as sculpture, installation, electrocution, performance, word-working, nonsense and merrymaking. She is not left-handed and weaves as truthfully as she sees fit.
Charlene Fix is the author of Flowering Bruno, (XOXOX Press, 2006), Mischief (Pudding House, 2003), Charlene Fix: Greatest Hits(Kattywompus, 2012), Harpo Marx as Trickster (McFarland, 2013), and Frankestein’s Flowers (CW Books, 2014). She co-coordinates Hospital Poets at The Ohio State University Hospitals, and she is an activist for Middle East peace.
Robbie Gamble lives in Boston. When he is not obsessing about images and line breaks, he works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people.
Rae Gouirand is the author of two collections of poetry—Open Winter (Bellday Prize, Bellday Books, 2011) and Glass is Glass Water is Water(Spork Press, 2018)—as well as the chapbook Must Apple(winner of the Oro Fino Competition, Educe Press, 2018). She founded numerous longrunning poetry and prose workshops in northern California and online, and lectures in the Department of English at UC-Davis.
Kathleen Heil’s poems appear in The New Yorker, Fence, The Cincinnati Review, Barrow Street, DIAGRAM,Beloit Poetry Journal. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, she lives and works in Berlin.
Andrés Hernández is a student at the Autonomous University of Baja California, where he studies translation and interpretation of languages. His work has appeared in WorldLink, Zeta,Linotipia.org, and other fine publications. He recently presented his first collection of poems, Terapia (Saturno Editorial, 2017), at FELINO, the Northern Literature Festival in Tijuana, Mexico.
Bob Hicok’s latest book of poems is Hold(Copper Canyon, 2018).
Richard Holeton is author of the hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, other electronic literature, and fiction or hybrid work in many journals including the Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, ZYZZYVA, Black Ice, and Vassar Review. He’s won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Brown Foundation/Dora Maar House, and the California Arts Council. He lives and writes on the California coast near Half Moon Bay.
Jack Israel is a former tax director and now a full-time poet. Over the years, his poems have appeared in APR, BeloitPoetry Review, Cream City Review, Cortland Review, and Cleaver.
Rae Hoffman Jager is the author of One Throne (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in print and online journals like Ambit, Arsenic Lobster, Rise Up Review, IDK, to name a few. Her work has been described as rambunctious, urgent, funny, and elegiac. She holds a BA from Warren Wilson College and an MFA from Wichita State University. When she is not writing or reading poems for Rivet Journal, she can be found staring out of windows. raehoffmanjager.com
William James is a poet, aging punk, and railroad enthusiast from New Hampshire. He’s the founding editor of Beech St. Reviewand the author of rebel hearts & restless ghosts. His poems have appeared in various literary journals, punk zines, and on the occasional vinyl LP. @thebilljim / williamjamespoetry.com
Dana Jennings is a features editor for The New York Times. He has also published six books of fiction and nonfiction. Her poem is part of his work in progress: TOXIC YOUTH: Factory Poems.
Daniel Johnson is the author of How to Catch a Falling Knife(Alice James Books). He is completing his second collection, an exploration his twenty-year friendship with American journalist James Foley, who was killed by ISIS in Syria in 2014. Johnson’s poetry has been featured on National Public Radio, PBS News Hour, in The Washington Postand a variety of journals, and in anthologies including Best American Poetry, The Iowa Review, and I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio. At present, Johnson is serving as an artist-in-residence with the City of Boston.
Kamal E. Kimball is a Pushcart-nominated poet currently living in the Ohio River Valley. A reader for Muzzle Magazine and associate poetry editor for The Journal, her work has been published in Rattle,Hobart, Sundog Lit, Bone Paradeand elsewhere. She works as a grant writer, auction house researcher, journalist, and teacher, and will be entering The Ohio State University MFA program in fall of 2018. kamalkimball.com
Sarah Koenig lives in Seattle. Her poetry has appeared in City Arts, Pageboy, Calyx, Mudlark, DIAGRAM,Barrow Street, as well as in Washington 129, an anthology of Washington state poets, and on King County transit as part of the Poetry on Buses project.
Bethany Lewis is a multidisciplinary artist studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Sometimes, they’ll leave strawberries by their bed at night so they don’t have to get up for breakfast. Twitter/Instagram: @polyplatonic
Blake Lipper is a Cincinnati hambone.
Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. He received his MFA from Minnesota State University-Mankato, and teaches English at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County. His poems have appeared in Razor,Split Lip, and Bad Pony.
John Maradik’s work has appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, Bennington Review, Jubilat, Quarterly West,and Fourteen Hills. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Megan Martin is the author of the book of tiny fictions NEVERS(Caketrain, 2014). She teaches writing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Joel Martyr studied Literature at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His work has been published in The Ekphrastic Review,Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Explicator, and on his website Fork’s Pass Poetry. He currently teaches high school English in Bristol, United Kingdom.
Kiley McVey is a junior at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, studying creative writing. They make paintings, objects, poems, and wishes at 11:11. They are the pompom at the ankle of your socks. They can park at the end of the parking lot and order colorful earrings online. They give you the excitement you’ve been hoping for.
Paige Menton grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and earned a BA in comparative literature from Brown University. Her poetry has appeared in Kestrel,Matter, Fourth River,LVNG, Spiral Orb, Clade Song, ecopoetics, and other journals. She teaches writing and naturalist studies near Philadelphia.
Daniel Moysaenko holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is the author of the chapbook New Animal (H_NGM_N Books, 2015). Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asymptote,The Journal, Oversound, Pleiades, Tupelo Quarterly,Verse Daily, The Volta, West Branch Wired, and elsewhere. He is pursuing a poetry PhD at Florida State University.
Petro Moysaenko is from Cleveland, lives in New York, and co-edits the online journal Paperbag.
Tom Paine’s poetry has been published in The Nation,Glasgow Review of Books, The Moth (Ireland), Volt, Fence,Blackbox Manifold (Cambridge), Hotel Amerika, Gulf Stream, Tampa Review, and World Literature Today. His stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New England Review, The Boston Review, Best New Southern Stories, The O. Henry Awardsand twice in the Pushcart Prize.He has won fellowships from Sewanee, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf, and has written for Francis Ford Coppola. 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.
Mark Ramirez was born, writes poems, and will die.
Ricky Ray was born in Florida and educated at Columbia University. He is the author of Fealty(Eyewear, 2018) and founding editor ofRascal: a Journal of Ecology, Literature and Art. His work can be found in The American Scholar, The Matador Review, Amaryllis, Scintillaand One. His awards include the Cormac McCarthy Prize, the Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, the Fortnight Poetry Prize, and a Whisper River Poetry Prize. He lives in Harlem with his wife, three cats and a Labradetter. Their bed, like any good home of the heart, is frequently overcrowded.
Brandon Rushton’s poems appear in Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, CutBank, Sonora Review, and Passages North. In 2016, he was the winner of both the Gulf Coast Prize and the Ninth Letter Award for Poetry. In 2017, he served as the Theodore Roethke Fellow at the Marshall Fredericks Museum. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives and writes in Charleston, South Carolina and teaches writing at the College of Charleston.
Dave Rutschman is a Soto Zen priest and a hospice grief counselor. He is author of Into Terible Light(Forklift Books, 2017), and his work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, The Sun, Waxwing, and Witness.He lives in California with his wife and two children.
Inga Lea Schmidt holds an MFA from Hollins University. Her poetry can be found (or will soon be found) in Black Warrior Review, Hobart, Gigantic Sequins, Flock,and elsewhere. She was a 2013 AWP Intro Journals Project Winner in Poetry and won the 2015 Enoch Pratt Poetry Prize. She lives in Pittsburgh next to a very large cemetery.
Sean Adam Simon is a writer, musician, composer, and visual artist with a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU and an MA in Philosophy and Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam where he studied as a Netherlands America Foundation Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Dayton, Ohio.
Jeff Sirkin is the author of the poetry collection Travelers Aid Society(2016), and his work has appeared in Mandorla, Puerto del Sol, and Volta. Co-editor of the online poetry journal A DOZEN NOTHING,he teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas, El Paso, where he co-curates the Dishonest Mailman Reading Series.
Bronwen Tate is the author of six chapbooks, most recently Vesper Vigil (above/ground 2016. She received an MFA in Literary Arts (Poetry) from Brown University in 2006 and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 2014. She has taught courses on literature, aesthetics, creative writing, and composition at Brown University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Stanford University, and Marlboro College, where she is currently Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature. Her poems and essays have appeared in LIT, How2, Octopus, Denver Quarterly, Typo, Journal of Modern Literature and elsewhere.
Leah Umansky is the author of The Barbarous Century(Eyewear 2018). She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Guernica, The New York Times, Pleiadesand Salamander. She is #teamkhaleesi and #teambernard. @lady_bronte / leahumansky.com
Zach VandeZande is an Assistant Professor at Central Washington University. He is the author of the novel Apathy and Paying Rent(Loose Teeth, 2008) and a short story collection Lesser American Boys (Ferry Street Books, 2018). His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Gettysburg Review, Yemassee, Georgia Review, Wigleaf,Smokelong Quarterly, Portland Review, Cutbank, Sundog Literature, Slice Magazine, Atlas Review, The Adroit Journal. He likes you just fine.
Thomas Wagster is a poet and artist who lives and resides in Cincinnati, where he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He is co-founder and editor at Midwestern Press, a small independent publisher and book store. His debut chapbook of poetry, Statelessness, came out in September 2018.
Tom Wayman’s recent collections of poems include Built to Take It: Selected Poems 1996-2013(Spokane: Lynx House Press, 2014), andHelpless Angels (Saskatoon: Thistledown, 2017). A selection of his essays 1994-2014, If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free: Literature and Social Change, was published by Toronto’s Guernica Editions in spring 2018.
Sheila Wellehan’s poetry has recently been featured in the Aurorean, Menacing Hedge, San Pedro River Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. sheilawellehan.com
Harris Wheeler is a poet and sculptor studying Creative Writing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Their work explores the intersection of sculpture, language, and the body.