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 MoreWei He is in the beginning of a long, successful, bilingual writing career. After accepting her short fiction story “You Are the City” for the first issue of Spry, we were shocked to find out that it was her first English publication. You’d think she spoke and wrote English her entire life with the way her words preformed a melody on the page. Her short story was so lyrical and well written, and Spry was honored to be the home for this story. Wei He was kind enough to speak with Erin about the story, her process, and current aspirations. Erin Ollila: H, the narrator of “You are the City” considers the world (specifically the city)...
Read MoreKatie Mullins’ poem “Coming to Terms” explores the collision between the past and the present, more specifically what it’s like to learn that an old friend committed a terrible crime. Word for word, image for image, this poem will make you think about the complexity of friendship and why sometimes it’s the good memories that haunt us the most. Kelly: So you and I actually know each other outside of our Spry connection–I recently earned an MFA in fiction from Spalding University and you’re a current MFA candidate there. What made you decide to go back to school? Katie: That was part of the reason I was so excited to do this...
Read MoreJenni Nance is a creative nonfiction MFA candidate at the University of South Florida. She is the recipient of The Knocky Parker Creative Nonfiction Award and nominated for 2014’s AWP Intro Journals Award for Creative Nonfiction. Jenni teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida and with the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Mother, Sweet: A Literary Confection and Necessary Fiction. Spry is lucky to have published two of Jenni’s pieces, “Variations of Numbness” and “Hefty Bag.” Allison: You’ve published both creative nonfiction and fiction in Spry, but you write poetry, too....
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