JOSHUA PLACK is an aspiring writer at the University of Oregon where he won scholarship into the KIDD program, a creative writing workshop, which included mentoring from well-established authors. He recently won the Matthew Knight Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Shirley McClure Poetry Award. His work has been featured in literary journals such as the Pinyon Review, Echoes and Visions, the Underground, and Unbound. Read more →

MICHAEL T. SMITH is an Assistant Professor of the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, where he received his PhD in English. He teaches cross-disciplinary courses that blend humanities with other areas. He has published over 40 pieces in over 20 different journals (mostly within the past year). He also has critical work recently published in Symbolism and Cinematic. He loves to travel.
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KEITH CARVER, of Michigan, is a transnational educrat with a DHS file and big-boy striver debt. Ex-Fulbright/Cub Scout. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in *Rust + Moth, Blacktop Passages, Adelaide, Your Impossible Voice, and a*rmarolla*. *He lives near the Black Sea with his wife. Read more →

B.P. HERRINGTON was born and raised in the Big Thicket of eastern Texas. His work as a composer took him to the Royal Academy of Music, London, and has earned numerous awards. His short stories rooted in the Big Thicket have recently appeared in Post Road Magazine and Adelaide Magazine. Read more →

WHITNEY COLLINS‘s fiction appears in New Limestone Review, Grist, LUMINA, and The Pinch and is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Gateway Review, and Moon City Review. She lives in Kentucky where she is an MFA student at Spalding University. Read more →

JENNIFER MAKOWSKY earned her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona. Her work has appeared in Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women, The Portland Review, Gargoyle, and is forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review. Currently she resides in Tucson, AZ where she teaches English to refugees. Read more →

STEPHEN HERMAN holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry, U. Mass., Amherst. He taught Creative Writing and Poetry at City College of San Francisco for 12 years. In 2012, he published Night Visions, awarded Gold Seal of Literary Excellence. He also won First Prize in San Francisco Writers’ Contest in 2013. He was appointed to the Human Rights Commission of San Francisco and served for two years. In 2010 he retired from City College of San Francisco as Associate Vice Chancellor. Read more →

KATE GARKLAVS lives and works in Portland, OR. Her work has appeared in Juked, apt, NOO Journal, Tammy, and The Airgonaut, among other places. She earned her MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and her first chapbook (“Diffusely Yours”) is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Read more →

LINDSAY D’ANDREA is a writer based in the Boston area, where she also works in book production and coaches youth soccer. You can find more of her recent work online at Noble Gas Quarterly, Longleaf Review, and The Collapsar. Connect on Twitter and Instagram @Lindszd. Read more →

LAWRENCE F. FARRAR is a former US diplomat with multiple assignments in Japan as well as postings in Germany, Norway, and Washington, DC. He also lived in Japan as a graduate student and as a naval officer. His stories have appeared more than 50 times in lit magazines, such as The Chaffin Journal, Zone 3, Streetlight,Curbside Splendor E-Zine, Evening Street Review, Big Muddy, Tampa Review Online, O-Dark-Thirty, Jelly Bucket, The MacGuffin,and Green Hills Literary Lantern. His stories often involve people coming up against the customs of a foreign culture. Read more →