Editor of Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art, Jill Khoury earned her Masters of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Inter|rupture, Arsenic Lobster, Portland Review, and Copper Nickel. Her poems “Amenie,” “Suites for the Modern Dancer,” and “Crows” have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2013, “Trilafon” was nominated for a Best of the Net Award, and Split This Rock picked her poem “Certain Seams” as a third place winner in their 2013 poetry contest, judged by Mark Doty. Her chapbook, Borrowed Bodies, was...
Read MoreKevin Brown is a Professor of English at Lee University. He has published two full-length collections of poems, A Lexicon of Lost Words, (2013; Winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry) and Exit Lines (2009); two chapbooks: Abecedarium (2011) and Holy Days: Poems (winner of the 2011 Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest); and a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again (2012). He has also published a scholarly work They Love to Tell the Story: Five Contemporary Authors Take on the Gospels (2012) with Kennesaw State University Press, in addition to critical articles on Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, John Barth, and Tony Earley. He received a Ph.D in...
Read MoreHaving safely moved into my new dorm room half-way across the country from my usual home, having said goodbye to parents, friends, family, until Thanksgiving, having tamed a massively unruly schedule through the circus that is add-drop, having attained forms to declare my major by the month’s end, having just completed my first paper of the semester, I write to you again. When this many events occur in the span of two or three weeks, time slows measurably. I have not received my first paycheck yet, and already it seems months since I’ve seen the faces of my mom or dad, or that of a childhood friend who I watched bury her father this summer. And I am missing them,...
Read MoreA few weeks ago, my parents and I drove back to the Oberlin campus, a process which entails filling our Subaru to the brim with the necessities I have packed (mostly books), and heading out on many tree-lined highways for the 2-day trek. And, as always, we stop in Memphis, Tennessee to stay with my Great Aunts Jean and Jo. The two story house these sisters share has been an integral part of my conceptions of home and family since my first stay there when I was 10 or 11. I was being driven to my first extended stay at a remote summer camp tucked into the Cumberland Plateau, and Aunt Jean and Aunt Jo were seeing me for the first time in many years. This initial visit...
Read MoreWhy do babies like peek-a-boo? Infants don’t know something exists unless they can see it for themselves— hide behind your hands and suddenly you’re whole face has actually disappeared. In psychology, this is called object permanence, and it has everything to do with trust. There is a beautifully false myth about writerly folk that suggests that what inspires our work is, most often, a semi-divine insistence or gift from a muse/fairy/magical-creature-of-your-choosing. Once upon a while, written arts can be created, but only when this being shoots its lightning bolt of creative ability down upon the chosen bard humans, and then a story or poem may be born onto...
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