Christopher J. Anderson is Founding Editor and Creative Director for Eastern Point Lit House & Press and
Extract(s): Daily Dose of Lit. His work has appeared in
The Beloit Fiction Journal,
The Good Men Project,
Nothing Shocking, and elsewhere. He lives in Gloucester, MA with his wife and two children.
June Baird is the Features Writer for a
Glasgow magazine, student of Creative Writing at The Open University and is a single mum. A story teller from an early age, June won her first award for poetry from The Bassetlaw Association of Arts at the age of only fifteen. She has lived an interesting life, travelled extensively, and writes her best when it’s autobiographical with an edgy humour and air of social injustice. While living in remote Greece a chance encounter with the late, great poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell (who instantly saw promise in her) inspired June to follow her dreams and become a writer. After returning to Scotland, she was granted a place on a tutored Arvon Foundation Retreat, Writing for Children. June is currently working on a series of non-fiction children’s books to inspire a young generation of travellers and explorers.
Laura Bernstein is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University Camden. Her poems have been featured in
Agave Magazine, New Verse News, and
The Quotable, among others. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her husband and toddler daughter.
Jerrod E. Bohn finished his MFA in poetry in 2010 at Colorado State University. His work has appeared or is soon forthcoming in
Phoebe,
Bank-Heavy Press, The Montreal Review,
alice blue,
Spry, Matter,
Souvenir,
Moria,
The Ottawa Arts Review,
Zouch, Emerge, SPECS, Word For/Word and elsewhere. He currently resides in Fort Collins, Colorado where he teaches composition, creative writing and literature; works at a bicycle shop/beer bar/coffee shop and instructs yoga.
Ryan Bollenbach is a writer attending the University of Alabama’s MFA program. He believes burritos are the highest form of art. His poetry can be read or is forthcoming in the
Pinch Journal, Black Heart Magazine, Dialogist, Split Rock Review, Word Riot, Dark Matter Journal, and other publications. He reads for
BWR and
Sweet: A Literary Confection. You can read his media-cetric musings
here.
James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. He is the author of “Blood a Cold Blue,” a collection of short fiction published by Press 53 of Winston-Salem, NC. An as yet untitled novel will be published in the spring/summer of 2014 by Thrice Publishing. His fiction and poetry appears in over 150 journals, magazines, and websites, and in countries as far-flung as India, New Zealand, and Ireland. He serves as a fiction editor at
Literary Orphans, one of the web’s most acclaimed new journals for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Marion de Booy Wentzien was a recipient of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award (twice) and The New Letters Literary Award. The Chicago Humanities for the Arts presented one of her stories in their Stories on Stage. Her fiction has appeared in
Seventeen Magazine, Blue Penny Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Scholastic Books, Story Magazine, On the Page, Big Ugly Review, The Quotable, Prime Number, The Sonora Review, Bareback Lit, Tattoo Highway, Red Fez, Cossack Review, Citron Review, Extract(s), Drafthorse, Solstice, ROAR and other literary journals. She has been nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Saratoga, CA with her husband and some formerly stray animals.
Robert Morgan Fisher is a writer/musician. His fiction has appeared in
The Huffington Post, The Snake Nation Review,
The Seattle Review, Spindrift, Bluerailroad and other publications. He’s also written for TV, radio and film. He often writes companion songs to his stories and has won many awards. Robert served as Fiction Editor for the Antioch online literary magazine
Lunch Ticket and also voices audiobooks. Please visit his
website.
Patricia Flaherty-Pagan writes, edits and facilitates writing workshops in Houston. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Godard College while living in Indonesia. Her flash fiction, poetry and essays have been published in The Pitkin Review, The Light In Ordinary Things, Calico Tiger, Fierce With Reality and Chicken Soup for the Soul: True Love. She is currently editing Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers. Find her online
here.
Katherine Frain is a firm believer in skepticism. Currently, she’s a poetry editor at the
Adroit Journal and a First National Reader at
Polyphony HS. Once, she told someone she got a black eye in a fistfight about late French Romanticism and they believed her, so she writes bios like this to keep from becoming that person, and also to freak out Jack Meagher, to whom this poem is dedicated. Her work can also be found in the
Adroit Journal,
Polyphony HS, and
Postscript, and is forthcoming in the
Medusa’s Laugh Press Cadavre Exquis anthology and
Rufous City Review. Wherever you are, she hopes it’s amazing.
Emelyn Fuhrman has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and an MS from Carnegie Mellon University. She lives in the Pittsburgh area with her two daughters. Her work has also appeared in
Flywheel Magazine.
Ricky Garni has been published in
MuDjoB,
PigeonBike,
Disingenuous Twaddle,
VIs a Tergo,
Quite Curious Literature,
Rufous Salon,
Guerilla Pamphlets,
Used Furniture Review,
Perhaps I Am Wrong About This World, Ginger Piglet and a host of other deliciously named periodicals, including, to his additional delight,
Spry.
Hadiyah Huma graduated with a M.F.A. in poetry from George Mason University. Her work has appeared in North American Review and she was a fellow at the 2012 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont. When she isn’t hunting through thrift stores and turning curtains into cocktail dresses, she runs around with preschoolers. She lives and works in the greater Baltimore area.
Thomas Kearnes is a 37-year-old author originally from East Texas and now living in Houston. His fiction has appeared in
PANK, Storyglossia, Spork, The Ampersand Review, Word Riot, Eclectica, JMWW Journal, Night Train, SmokeLong Quarterly, wigleaf, A cappella Zoo, Johnny America, Digital Americana Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, The Northville Review and numerous LGBT venues, including
Educe Journal, Diverse Arts Project, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Wilde Magazine and the Best Gay Stories series. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and feels no embarrassment mentioning that. He occasionally writes for
Flash Fiction Chronicles. His debut short-story collection, “Pretend I’m Not Here,” is now available from Musa Publishing. A second collection, “Promiscuous,” is due before Halloween from JMS Books. He is an atheist and an Eagle Scout.
AJ Kirby is the author of the novels
Paint this Town Red, Bully and
Sharkways, and the non-fiction (sports) book Fergie’s Finest. His short fiction has been published across the web, and in magazines, anthologies and literary journals, as well as in two collections:
The Art of Ventriloquism and
Mix Tape. He was one of 20 Leeds-based authors under 40 recently shortlisted for the LS13 ‘best in show’ competition and his novel
Paint this Town Red was shortlisted for last year’s The Guardian Not the Booker prize.
Chels Knorr likes to write about things that matter. If she could, she’d be a professional student. To make money, she edits. To spend money, she travels. Sometimes she posts ramblings
here.
A native of Syracuse, New York and a graduate of the University of Chicago,
Ellen Kombiyil’s work has appeared in
Beloit Poetry Journal,
Cider Press Review,
Cordite Poetry Review,
Poemeleon,
Silk Road Review, and
Spillway, among others. Her first book,
Histories of the FuturePerfect, is forthcoming in 2014. She is a Founding Poet of
The (Great)Indian Poetry Collective, launching in December. She lives in Bangalore, India, where she leads writing workshops and also teaches yoga.
Suzy La Follette received an MFA in poetry and non-fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles in 2013. She was an Associate Editor for The Splinter Generation from 2011-2012 and is the founder and editor of Spoken Word Review. She published an essay in How To Make a Life as a Poet a book by Gary Mex Glazner and her non-fiction piece “Reading Smoke” was nominated by Antioch to represent the school in AWP’s Intro Journals Project. She is a firefighter and lives in Austin, TX.
Matt Lafreniere received his MFA in poetry from Fairfield University. He teaches English at a boarding school in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he and his wife marvel at their new baby girl. His work has appeared
in
Pilgrimage Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Wild Violet, and others.
Sharanya Manivannan is the author of a book of poems,
Witchcraft. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in
Drunken Boat,
Hobart,
Wasafiri,
Prairie Schooner,
Cerise Press,
Killing the Buddha, the
Best of The Net anthology and elsewhere. She has received a Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship and an Elle Fiction Award, and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in India and can be found online
here or on
Facebook or Twitter @ranyamanivannan
.
Jennifer Martelli was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University (BA/BS) and The Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers (M.F.A.). She’s taught high school English as well as women’s literature at Emerson College in Boston. Her work has appeared, or will appear, in the following publications:
The Denver Quarterly, Folio, Calliope, Kalliope, The Mississippi Review, The Bellingham Review, Kindred, Bitterzoet, ZigZag Folio, The Inflectionist Review, Sugared Water, Slippery Elm and Tar River Review. She was a finalist for the Sue Elkind Poetry Prize and a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. Her chapbook, “Apostrophe,” was published in 2011 by BigTable Publishing Company. Right now, she is at home with her two kids, involved in the poetry scene in Salem, Massachusetts, and teaching occasional classes at the Peabody Library.
Gavin McCall’s short stories, essays and one poem have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Eyeshot, Every Day Fiction, Paradigm, Bamboo Ridge, and Off Course. He won Hawai‘i Review’s first Sudden Fiction Award and a scholarship to attend the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and has worked for three years as an intern for The Normal School Magazine. He earned an MA in Honolulu and an MFA in Fresno, but now he lives and writes on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, the first place he called home.
Leah Sewell is assistant editor at Coconut Poetry, an MFA candidate at the University of Nebraska, and a book designer, poet, and mother. Her work has appeared in such publications as [PANK], Midwestern Gothic, Mom Egg and Weave Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart in 2012. Her chapbook, Birth in Storm, was the 2013 winner of the Emerge Publications Chapbook Competition.
Fred Shaw is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University. His poems have been published in 5AM, Permafrost, Floodwall, Nerve Cowboy, Burlesque Press, Mason’s Road, Shaking Like a Mountain, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh City Paper, where he currently reviews books. In a parallel life, he has also worked in the service industry for the past twenty-three years. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dog.
Rosanna Staffa is an Italian writer currently living in Minneapolis. She received her MFA in Fiction by Spalding University in May. Her short story T
he Ghost of Chendu is published in the current issue of
The Baltimore Review. Her plays have been seen on stage in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Minneapolis. She is a recipient of a McKnight Advanced Grant, a Jerome Fellowship, and an AT/T On Stage Grant. Her play,
The Interview opened the Tokyo International Art Festival,
The Innocence of Ghosts was seen in New York Off-Broadway at St Clement’s Theatre, and was filmed for inclusion in the Lincoln Center Theatre on Film Library.
Mirage and
Lucky are published by Smith & Krauss.
Waltz and
My Brother Sandro by Heinemann. Her adaptation of Djemma Bider’s
The Biggest Little House in the Forest is included in the Plays for Early Learning Anthology
Igniting Wonder published by the University of Minnesota Press. She is an Affiliated Member of The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
Samantha Eliot Stier’s short stories have appeared in
The Faircloth Review, Black Heart Magazine, Extract(s), Citizen Brooklyn, Infective Ink Magazine, and
Gemini Magazine, and will be featured in LA’s New Short Fiction Series in 2014. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and lives in sunny Venice Beach, California. Visit her
here.
Donna Vorreyer is a Chicago-area writer who spends her days teaching middle school, trying to convince teenagers that words matter. Her work has appeared in many journals and
her fifth chapbook,
We Build Houses of Our Bodies, is forthcoming this year from Dancing Girl Press. Her first full-length poetry collection,
A House of Many Windows, is now available from Sundress Publications. She also serves as a poetry editor for
Mixed Fruit magazine. Visit her online
here.
