HOW WE ARE.

Marilyn Abildskov is the author of The Men in My Country. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Sewanee Review, Epoch, Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches in the MFA Program at Saint Mary's College of California.

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. His poems are featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Poet Lore, Transition Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere.

Kazim Ali's practices include words, movement, and ravenous inquiry. He lives on the California coast in Kumeyaay land, commonly referred to as San Diego. Find him on twitter: @kazimalipoet.

Lee Anderson is an MFA student at Northern Arizona University and the Managing Editor of Thin Air Magazine. They have been published sporadically but with zest, in places such as Back Patio Press and Essay Daily. 

Karin Anderson is a mother of grown children, now spinning their own tales. She’s also a Professor of English at Utah Valley University. She writes about people, places, and perplexities set in the Great Basin.  Her most current work is affiliated with Torrey House Press: https://www.torreyhouse.org/before-us-like-a-land-of-dreams.

There are a lot of Befores and Afters, too many. Nadya Anderson wrote a letter before the murder of George Floyd in her hometown. Times and Places that initiate Befores and Afters, are precisely part of the problem—systematic oppression has always been both Here and There in Nadya’s lifetime. Nothing personal, nothing personal to preserve. For that, she is in solidarity, saying his name, until things change, until people matter—that does imply a lifetime. 

Nicole Celeste Anderson is an artist and writer, based out of Albuquerque, NM. She has sparkling eyes set on an MFA in Creative Writing, at some point in her future, but what with the pandemic, parenting, and economic uncertainty, we'll just have to see what happens. She'll keep writing, nonetheless. She is enrolled in her final semester at University of New Mexico, for her BFA. 

Susanne Paola Antonetta’s forthcoming books are Entangled Objects: A Novel in Quantum Parts, The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, and The Devil's Castle. She is also the author of Make Me a Mother, Curious Atoms: A History with Physics, Body Toxic, A Mind Apart, the novella Stolen Moments, and four books of poetry. Awards for her writing include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science book of the year, an Oprah Bookshelf listing, a Pushcart prize, and others. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The UK Independent, Orion, The New Republic and many anthologies. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.  

Krista Diane Bautista is an Ilocana-American poet, musician and activist working through Sacramento California.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is most recently the author of Travesty Generator, winner of the Poetry Society of America's 2020 Anna Rabinowitz Prize for interdisciplinary work

Karen Babine is the author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer and Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life, both winners of the Minnesota Book Award for memoir/creative nonfiction. She also edits Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Armen Bacon is an op ed columnist and the author of three books: “Griefland – An Intimate Portrait of Love, Loss and Unlikely Friendship,” and “My Name is Armen”(Volumes I & II). Her essays have appeared in Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change, Entropy, Brevity Blog, Hybred Magazine, and The Fresno Bee. Determined to escape pandemic despair, she and co-author, Phyllis Brotherton, are busy submitting a new collaborative effort, “The Words Between Us – A Pandemic Abecedarius” to publishers. Follow her journey on Twitter @ArmenBacon, Instagram @ArmenBacon and Facebook: Armen D. Bacon.

Sarah Ruth Bates is an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, where she is Managing Editor of the Sonora Review. Her work has appeared in Hobart, the Boston Globe Magazine, Appalachia Journal, and elsewhere. More at sarahruthbates.com.

Lou Beach is a writer and artist whose work has been praised by Terry Gilliam, Jeff Bridges, Matt Groening, George Saunders and many others. Of his collection of stories, 420 Characters, Jonathan Lethem said, "Holy shit! These are great!" For more check out www.loubeachart.com

Abby Bensen is a college student from Minnesota who dabbles in music and writing. She's avoiding making music professionally, and her work with words includes editing this year's Summit Avenue Review and writing news releases for the Playful Learning Lab. She actively avoids driving through drive-thrus and watching "Titanic" just so she can say she hasn't.

Wade Bentley lives, teaches, and writes in Salt Lake City. For a good time, he enjoys wandering the Wasatch Mountains and playing with his grandchildren. His collection, What Is Mine, was published by Aldrich Press in 2015. His poems have appeared or will soon be published in Green Mountains Review, Cimarron Review, Best New Poets, Western Humanities Review, Subtropics, Rattle, among others. 

Amy Bergen is a fiction writer from the Midwest currently living in Portland, Maine. She thought about reading Infinite Jest all the way through in isolation. She probably won't. 

Lisa Bickmore lives in West Jordan, Utah, with her husband John McCormick, and teaches writing at Salt Lake Community College. 

Monique Birault, a creator on many levels, is fundamentally an architect, always curious, led by a high need for cognition and ideation. Making jewelry for this Los Angeles native was, and continues to be, a way of working out ideas. Positive public response led to gallery representation and using her jewelry as a fundraising vehicle for various organizations from arts and mental health to cancer. It was also sold in boutiques across Los Angeles. In recent years she’s put health first, while managing her career, and currently looks forward to putting jewelry in the world again!

Ellie Black is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in Best New Poets 2018, DIAGRAM, Booth, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor at Sibling Rivalry Press.

Adam Blackwell lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and three children. He works for ProQuest, an academic publishing company. He used to do a fair bit of creative writing. But it’s been a while.

Judy Bolton-Fasman has completed a memoir entitled “Prayers and Trastiendas: A Daughter Tracks Down Her Parents’ Secrets.” She has published essays in a variety of venues including, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti and Brevity. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Mineral School in Mineral, Washington and the Vermont Studio Center. She is most recently the recipient of the Alonzo G. Davis Fellowship awarded to a Latinx writer from the Virginian Center for Creative Arts and was the Erin Donovan Fellow in Non-Fiction at the Mineral School in 2018.

Danielle Book is a 2020 graduate from Western Colorado University who studied Experimental Psychology. She has an internship at Penn Vet working in a dog clinic. On the side, she creatively writes. She has published an award-winning poem, “Of the Dry,” in Pathfinder Magazine.  

Joe Bonomo is the author of seven books, most recently No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing and Field Recordings from the Inside, a collection of music essays. Find him at No Such Thing As Was at @BonomoJoe.

Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, where she studies creative writing, and rhetoric and composition. She is the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction and co-editor of its forthcoming anthology, The Best of Brevity (Rose Metal Press, 2020). She is also a podcast host for the New Book Network’s Literature channel.

Susan Briante is the author of three books of poetry: Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus, and The Market Wonders all from Ahsahta Press. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. Defacing the Monument, a series of essays on immigration, archives, aesthetics and the state, was published by Noemi Press in August 2020.

A. Laura Brody sculpts for the human body and its vehicles. She developed and curates Opulent Mobility, a series of exhibits that re-imagine disability as opulent and powerful. Her art has been shown at ACE/121 Gallery, Brea Gallery, the Charles River Museum of Industry, Westbeth Center For the Arts, California State University Northridge, Gallery Expo, the Dora Stern Gallery at Arts Unbound, and The World of Wearable Art. Laura works as a professional costume maker and designer, an artist, and as a teacher. She is passionate about reuse, sustainability, and re-imagining disability.

Courtney Brooks received her MFA from Northern Arizona University, and is the former web editor for Thin Air Magazine. She reads and writes fabulism and horror, and is a sucker for an all-black outfit. She has been published in or has pieces forthcoming with Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Sky Island Journal, and Anti-Heroin Chic. 

Phyllis Brotherton, a memoirist and essayist, received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State University. Her work has been published in Under the Gum Tree, Entropy, Anomaly, Brevity Blog and elsewhere. She recently completed “The Words Between Us, A Pandemic Abecedarius,” a collaborative writing project with fellow writer, Armen D. Bacon. She is sheltering-in-place with her wife, Denise, eating too much and binge-watching “The Restaurant.” Follow her on Twitter @phyllisbwrites, Instagram @phyllis_brotherton and Facebook.     

Calef Brown is the author and illustrator of thirteen books for children including Polkabats and Octopus Slacks: 14 Stories,  Flamingos on the Roof: Poems and Paintings – a New York Times bestseller, The Ghostly Carousel and most recently, Up Verses Down – published by Henry Holt in 2019. He  has also illustrated the work of a variety of authors, including James Thurber, Daniel Pinkwater, Edward Lear, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Brown’s illustrations have appeared in Newsweek, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, and many other publications. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. calefbooks.com

Michael Buckius is a writer and filmmaker from Lancaster, PA. He earned his undergraduate degree in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, and his MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. His work has appeared in Shrew, Ghost City Review, Write On, Downtown, and elsewhere. His first chapbook, Future Sarcasm is forthcoming from Tolsun Books in the Fall of 2020.

Michelle Cacho-Negrete lives in Portland, Maine, where she works with writing students online and in person. Her essay “Stealing” appeared in the anthology Best of the Net 2011.

Annamarie Carlson is a literal tree-hugger, writer, voice actor, and PhD student. They make the sci-fi audio drama Evergreen Sky, and they are currently in the process of moving to Bloomington, Indiana with their cat, Geoff. AnnamarieLCarlson.com. 

Juliet Charney's first and last loves are live music. While she only briefly played saxophone, she spent over twenty years checking out every infamous hole in the wall venue from Boston and New York to Atlanta and London. Her last job before the pandemic was on the security team for a concert promoter. She lives in Atlanta.

Diana Chester is an artist, composer, and sound studies scholar based at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Jill Christman is the author of two memoirs, Darkroom: A Family Exposure & Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood, as well as essays in magazines such as Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Longreads, & True Story. A senior editor for River Teeth and executive producer of the new podcast Indelible: Campus Sexual Assault, she teaches at Ball State University. 

Steven Church is the author of six books of nonfiction, most recently the collection of essays, I'm Just Getting to the Disturbing Part: On Work, Fear, and Fatherhood and the book-length essay, One With the Tiger. He's a founding editor of The Normal School and coordinates the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.  

Paula Cisewski's fourth poetry collection, ​Quitter, won the Diode Editions Book Prize. She is also the author of The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. She lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches writing privately and academically and collaborates with fellow artists and activists.

Jessica Clark lives, writes, and works in Flagstaff, Arizona. She is trying to make her 2 acre plot of land into a microfarm.

Jennifer Cognard-Black is Professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she teaches courses in the novel, Victorian adaptations, fiction writing, and the literatures of food. Winner of the 2020 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching at Baylor University, she is also a two-time Fulbright Scholar to Slovenia and the Netherlands.  Cognard-Black has published five books, including Books That Cook: The Making of Literary Meal, and she’s also produced three lecture series with The Great Courses and Audible.com: Becoming a Great Essayist, Great American Short Stories, and Books that Cook: Food and Fiction. She publishes her short fiction under the pseudonym J. Annie MacLeod, and her work has appeared in many journals, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  In her spare time, she reads cookbooks like novels and is always game to try new recipes. 

Katharine Coles has published seven collections of poems, most recently Wayward (Red Hen Press, 2019).  Her memoir, Look Both Ways, was released in 2018 by Turtle Point Press, which will also publish The Stranger I Become: essays in reckless poetics in fall 2020, and Solve for X, a collection of poems, in 2022.  She has received awards from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation.  She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah.

Jennifer Colville is the founding editor of Prompt Press, a project connecting visual artists, book artists and writers. Elegies for Uncanny Girls, a collection of short stories, was published in 2017 by Indiana University Press. Jennifer leads creative writing workshops, and speaks on “The Inventive Female Voice,” and the intersection of writing and visual art.

Vanessa Cornett is a musician and writer living in the Twin Cities.  She teaches piano and other stuff at University of St. Thomas, is author of the book The Mindful Musician, and holds three professional wine certifications just because.

Bob Cowser, Jr.'s most recent book Green Fields: Crime, Punishment, and a Boyhood Between won "Best Memoir" from the Adirondack Center for Writers, and an excerpt was cited in the Best American Essays 2012. His first book, Dream Season, was a New York Times Book Review "Editor's Choice" and "Paperback Row" selection and was listed among the Chronicle of Higher Education's best-ever college sports books.

Sherri Craig is an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at West Chester University of PA where she researches Black women's' experiences in internships and early career positions. Sherri has co-edited a special volume on Black Studies for Spark a journal on activism in rhetoric, composition and literacy. She likes kissing her husband and medical dramas. 

Poet and essayist Heidi Czerwiec is the author of the lyric essay collection Fluid States, winner of Pleiades Press’ 2018 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose, and the poetry collection Conjoining. She teaches and writes in Minneapolis. Visit her at heidiczerwiec.com

Kimberly Dark is a writer, professor and raconteur, working to reveal the hidden architecture of everyday life so that we can reclaim our power as social creators. She’s the author of Fat, Pretty and Soon to be Old, The Daddies and Love and Errors, and her essays, stories and poetry are widely published in academic and popular online publications alike. You can find her course offerings in Sociology at Cal State San Marcos and Writing/Arts at Cal State Summer Arts. Kimberly hosts retreats, and travels internationally to offer workshops, lectures, and performances. Learn more at www.kimberlydark.com. 

Carol Ann Davis is a poet, essayist, and author of the poetry collections Psalm (2007) and Atlas Hour (2011), and The Nail in the Tree:  Essays on Art, Violence, and Childhood (2020)  from Tupelo Press. A former longtime editor of the literary journal Crazyhorse, she is Professor of English at Fairfield University, where she is founding director of Poetry in Communities, an initiative that brings writing workshops to communities hit by sudden or systemic violence. She lives in Newtown, CT, with her husband and two sons. www.carolanndavis.org

Christine Davis lives in Flagstaff, AZ with her family (Justin, Jett, Cadence and Molly the Adventure Dog). She teaches (taught? hiring is frozen/cancelled) composition at Northern Arizona University, where she earned her MFA. She writes a parenting column for SlashnBurn magazine, and blogs for Flagstaff Moms Blog. Her poetry can be found in Snapdragon Journal, Paragon Press, Clarion, Crack the Spine and more. She can be reached at Christine.Davis@nau.edu.

Justin Davis lives and works in Flagstaff, AZ with his wife, Christine, their kids (Jett and Cadence), and one anti social dog named Molly. He has been playing the guitar and making music for over a decade.

You can check out his music videos and other video projects at JDproductions5 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS3oLB39XCkFuospPxz7LYA.

Todd Davis is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Native Species (2019) and Winterkill (2016), both published by Michigan State University Press. His writing has won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and the Chautauqua Editors Prize. He teaches environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.

Andrew Dansby is a writer at the Houston Chronicle, where he covers entertainment, culture and occasionally trees.

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of five books of poetry and five of prose, most recently Zoologies: On Animals & the Human Spirit and forthcoming from Counterpoint The Sardine Dress, a project supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a Regents Professor at the University of Arizona.

Sandra Dihlmann is a graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and an MFA candidate at Northern Arizona University. Her work has appeared in Happy, Hearth, Curios, Ursa Minor, The Power of Words: A Diverse Gathering of Acclaimed Authors, and Narrow Chimney, Vol. II.  She lives in Flagstaff with her husband, daughter, and two dogs and is a full-time instructor of Creative Writing and Composition at Coconino Community College.

Jane van Dis, MD is a practicing ObGyn, founder of Equity Quotient, OB Best Practice, Medical Director at Maven, and single mom to 12-year old twins.

Jacqueline Doyle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at Cal State East Bay. She has some recent essays in The Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, and Passages North, and a new essay forthcoming in Fourth Genre this summer. She also writes very small nonfictions. Find more online at www.jacquelinedoyle.com

Ryan Drendel is an MFA candidate at Northern Arizona University and the editor-in-chief of Thin Air Magazine.

Eric Dovigi lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. His piece "here is a list of words I prefer" was the Grist Literary Journal 2017 Pro Forma contest 1st place winner. His first album "What have I put into this, and what do I get out of it?" is in the final stages of mixing. Subscribe to his YouTube channel (just his name) for updates on his new video series "Bad Acts; the Worst Thing Each President Did."

Shiv Dutta‘s publications have appeared in Tampa Review, Under the Sun, Tin House, Hippocampus Magazine, Silk Road Review, Pilgrimage, Green Briar Review, Evening Street Review, Compose Journal, Connotation Press, The Grief Diaries, South85 Journal, River & South Review, The Evansville Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Eclectica Magazine, Epiphany, The Evergreen Review, Front Porch, and other journals. He has also produced 45 technical papers and co-authored two technical books. Two of his personal essays were nominated for Pushcart Prize. He is currently writing a memoir. When not engaged in literary pursuits, Shiv spends way too much time on CNN and Facebook. 

Lindsay Dragan combines the sunny, harmonic gloss of the 1970s SoCal scene, mixed with the Canadian indie garage-pop stylings of the aughts, and a large helping of Rust Belt-informed Americana to create a complex but accessible sonic palette. Her long-awaited follow-up to 2014's Be Good To Yourself will be released when it’s safe to hold a record release rager, but rest assured, it’s mixed, mastered, and waiting. She holds an MA in English and lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and daughter. She’s anxious to get back to safely playing shows. Follow her on social media for concert and record info, thoughts and musings, and dog pictures.

Cymelle Leah Edwards is an MFA Creative Writing candidate at Northern Arizona University. She is the poetry editor for Thin Air Magazine. Her work has been published in Essay Daily, Contra Viento, Elm Leaves Journal, and elsewhere. 

Sarah Einstein teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is the author of Mot: A Memoir (University of Georgia Press, 2015) and Remnants of Passion (SheBooks, 2014). Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Sun, Ninth Letter, PANK, and other journals. Her work has been reprinted in Best of the Net and awarded a Pushcart Prize and the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction.

Joanna Eleftheriou is an assistant professor of English at Christopher Newport University, a contributing editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and a faculty member at the Writing Workshops in Greece. Her essay collection, This Way Back, will be out in October from West Virginia University Press. Visit her at www.joannaeleftheriou.com.

My name is Cameron Elgart. I'm a musician, writer, and aspiring teacher. I reside in Boise, Idaho, where my bands The Phets and VEMM happily call home. I have many passions, most of which include bringing people together. I see immense value in diverse identities coming together to achieve tranquil unanimity. 

This pandemic is an opportunity to unify our sense of self, and truly analyze the people we are and the people we are trying to become. 

Support your essential workers and stay calm, friend.

Linda Elgart received an MFA decades ago, but has spent most of her free time bicycle racing since then, along with studying Romance languages, and occasional bouts of running and drawing. The quarantine made her get out the drawing pencils again, with her young cats being the most compelling subjects.

On the exterior, Andrew Englund is a writer, musician, and Marine, who loves a good bar, reffing soccer, and spending time with his family. He is currently working on his first novel, and is soon to begin pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Northern Arizona University.

Chad Erpelding is a visual artist living in Boise, Idaho. His work has been shown in lots of places and can be viewed here: 

chaderpelding.com. During his free time, he is a Professor of Art and the MFA Visual Arts Program Director at Boise State University.

Lauren Fath's lyric essay chapbook, A Landlocked State, was recently published by Quarterly West. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Post Road, and poemmemoirstory, among others, and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Best of the Net nomination, and other awards. She received a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri, an MFA in nonfiction from Oregon State University, and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She is chair of the English department at New Mexico Highlands University.

Stephen Fellner lives with his husband Phil in Western New York. 

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. graduated with both a creative nonfiction writing and a literary translation MFA from the University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous press and Don’t Come Back, from Mad Creek Books, as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology The Great American Essay and the forthcoming 100 Refutations hybrid anthilogy from Mad Creek Books. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translation work has been featured in various journals including The Bellingham Review, The Chicago Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Poets & Writers and the Sunday Rumpus, among others. She’s been the recipient of the Best of the Net award and the Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices award, she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus to Chicago, where she works as an assistant professor for the University of Chicago.

Samantha Fields is a Los Angeles based visual artist and has been a Professor of Art at California State University, Northridge for 23 years. She has exhibited her work in galleries, museums, motel rooms, and even, once, in an envelope. You can follow her work on Instagram at @samanthafieldsstudio or see it the old fashioned way at www.samanthafields.net

Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of the nonfiction books, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America’s Food, Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer, Pot Farm, and Barolo; the poetry books, The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop, and 2 chapbooks.  His forthcoming nonfiction book, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers (about, among other things, the ways in which carrier pigeons are used by diamond smuggling rings) is due out February 2021 from W.W. Norton: Liveright, provided our world is still in existence by then. 

Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He loves exploring the riverlands with a fly rod and believes that every watershed should have a Poet Laureate. He is the author of two poetry collections - Robbing the Pillars (Homebound Publications) and the chapbook What I Know [How to Do] (Finishing Line Press). His poetry and essays have appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Drake Magazine, Permafrost, and Split Rock Review. You can find more of his writing at www.mgarrigan.com.

Shannon Gibney lives and writes in Minneapolis.

Tanya Ward Goodman is the author of the award winning memoir, “Leaving Tinkertown.” Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Luxe, Coast Magazine, Orange County Register, The Huffington Post, Literary Mama and Brain,Child. Her essay, "What Life Does," originally published in Fourth River was listed as notable in the 2019 Best American Science and Nature Writing. 

Harold Greene designs and builds furniture for residential clients, businesses and nonprofits. Mr Greene was awarded the COLA Fellowship for mid-career artists for his work which features reclaimed urban timber primarily for his chair designs. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries as well as museums and will be featured in a retrospective exhibit in May of 2021 covering the last forty years of his creative output. 

Allison Gruber is an essayist and educator. Her debut collection, You’re Not Edith, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Other work has appeared in Brevity, The Literary Review, Pithead Chapel, Hippocampus, and The Sonoran Review among many others. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy. 

Stephanie G’Schwind is the editor of Colorado Review and the director of The Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University. She is also editor of two anthologies: Man in the Moon: Essays on Fathers & Fatherhood and Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays.

Jeff Gundy teaches at Bluffton University in Ohio and has published twelve books of poetry and nonfiction, most recently Without a Plea and Abandoned Homeland, both from Bottom Dog Press. His work appears in Georgia Review, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Review, Christian Century, and various other places. 

Sarah Haak is an essayist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati, where she studies literary nonfiction writing and narratology. She holds a master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing from Ohio University. Before taking up writing, she was a chef, a small business owner, and a natural therapeutic specialist with a focus in herbal medicine making. She currently serves as an Assistant Editor for Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. 

Jessica Handler is the author of "The Magnetic Girl” (Winner, Southern Book Prize, 2020 selection “Books All Georgians Should Read,” Indie Next pick, Wall Street Journal Spring pick, SIBA “Okra” pick, Bitter Southerner Summer Reading pick), "Invisible Sisters: A Memoir”, and "Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss."

Karen Hausdoerffer is a writer who lives and teaches in Gunnison, Colorado.  She has published work in various literary magazines and is currently seeking an agent for her Middle Grade novel.

David Hawkins is an Associate Professor/Lecturer in the Dept. of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah and the author of the non-fiction chapbook, Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-it® Notes, selected by Michael Martone for the Cupboard’s Literary Pamphlet competition. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals and periodicals, including Barrow Street, Bat City Review, and DIAGRAM—and his long poems have appeared in At Length Magazine and The Seattle Review. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and their two boys.

Lesley Heiser is an unemployed writer in Maine delving deeply into CNF set in Scotland. She is assistant editor of CNF at the Atticus Review.

Robin Hemley is the author of 14 books, most recently Borderline Citizen:Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood.  He has won numerous awards for his writing, including three Pushcart Prizes in both fiction and nonfiction, as well as fellowships from The Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. Starting June 1st, 2020 he will be the Inaugural Director of the Polk School of Communications and Parsons Family Chair in Creative Writing at Long Island University.   

Justin Hocking is the author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir (Graywolf Press), winner of the Oregon Book Award and a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. His first book of poetry, PS: The Wolves, was released by Two Plum Press in late 2019. He teaches nonfiction and publishing in the MFA Program at Portland State University, and in the MA Program in Critical Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. More information available at justinhocking.net.

Khara House is a writer, poet, occasional educator, avid reader, karaoke connoisseur, and novice chef (back off, Gordon Ramsay) living and working in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her secret identity is that of a bespectacled multifamily housing professional, and her life's ambition is to own all the cats in the world.

Sonya Huber is the author of five books, including the essay collection on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Her other books include Opa Nobody and Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and other outlets. She teaches at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield low-residency MFA program.

Izzy Iliff is a rising college senior majoring in English Creative Writing. She grew up writing short stories and songs and in 2019, self-published her fantasy novel Shieldmaiden on the website The World of Eridos. Through her English degree, she has recently discovered a new love for writing both poetry and creative nonfiction. This spring, she won the Lon Otto Creative Writing Award for prose for one of her nonfiction pieces and has two nonfiction pieces and a poem published in the 2020 Summit Avenue Review. 

Carly Israel's first book, a memoir, is coming out this fall!  Seconds and Inches.  She has written for Huff Post before it went downhill (her opinion) and has a podcast for members of AA. 

Kristen Iversen is a writer of literary nonfiction and fiction. Her award-winning books include Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth; Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction; and a forthcoming literary biography of Nikola Tesla.

www.kristeniversen.com

iversekn@ucmail.uc.edu

Hana Jabr is a writer and teacher who lives in West Jordan, Utah with her partner, Todd, and their very handsome cat named Beau. She is currently working toward her MA in Literature at Weber State University. When she isn’t molding young minds or furiously annotating the teetering pile of books on her desk, she enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and horse.

Whitney (Walters) Jacobson is an assistant editor at Split Rock Review. Her creative nonfiction, reviews, and poetry have been published in Punctuate, Feminine Collective, Assay, Up North Lit, After the Pause, and Wanderlust-Journal, among other publications. She is currently working on a collection of essays exploring skills, objects, and traits passed on (or not) from generation to generation. Visit her website at: https://whitneywaltersjacobson.wordpress.com. 

Jemiah Jefferson is the author of Voice of the Blood, Fiend, and
Before and After Michael, and works as proofreader for Dark Horse
Comics. She lives in a basement apartment with blackout curtains in
southeast Portland.

Chelsey Johnson’s debut novel Stray City came out with Custom House/HarperCollins in 2018, and her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, The New York Times, and NPR's Selected Shorts, among others. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Signal Fire Arts. Born and raised in rural northern Minnesota, she now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she is an associate professor of fiction at Northern Arizona University’s MFA and undergraduate programs. A second novel is in the works.

Melissa Fite Johnson is a high school English teacher and poet who lives with her husband and dogs in Lawrence, KS. She is the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Recent and forthcoming publications include Pleiades, SWWIM, Stirring, Whale Road Review, Broadsided Press, and elsewhere. Find her online at melissafitejohnson.com

My name is Alaina Joleen. I am a Mexican creative fiction writer, beginning this year working towards my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. My writing consists of tackling social issues on the subjects of perpetual abuse and sexual assault of women, childhood abuse, mental illness, and the suppression and injustices faced by people of color. I write for social change. 

Érica Jones is a writer and teacher who lives at 7,000 feet and gets really stressed out about having her picture taken.

Jesica Juleseus, MA English (Fiction), graduated in 2012 from Northern Arizona University. After teaching high school English in Florida for five years she is currently take time off to raise her son.

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of the poetry books This Is How the Bone Sings and The Dead Wrestler Elegies, and co-author of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology. A Kundiman fellow, he lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he teaches at Grand Valley State University.

Billy Kilgore is a father of two boys and at-home dad living in Nashville, Tennessee. When not hiding from his family in the bathroom, he enjoys visits to the zoo to see the African porcupines.

Lynn Kilpatrick is a reader who sometimes writes, an eater, a music lover who is learning to play the ukelele, an exercise lover, a swimmer without a pool, a mother, a teacher, a sourdough baker. 

Her essays have appeared in Zone 3 and Creative Nonfiction. She is at work on a pandemic project called Postcards from Home. 

Bhanu Kapil is currently living in Cambridge, England, where she is the Judith E. Wilson poetry fellow.  Her first properly English book, How To Wash A Heart, was published by Pavilion Poetry this week, and is the Poetry Book Society Choice for the summer. This September, she will receive a Windham-Campbell Prize for poetry. Current projects include a pre-novella or fairy-tale, an introduction to the forthcoming Unknown Language by Hildegard von Bingen and Huw Lemmey (Ignota Books), a new edition of Incubation: a space for monsters (Kelsey Street Press), and "a reversed Secret Garden," a novel of childhood set in 1979.

Alison Kinney teaches nonfiction at Eugene Lang College at The New School. She’s written for The Paris Review Daily, Lapham’s Quarterly, The New Yorker.com, Longreads, Avidly, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, VAN Magazine, Harper’s, and other publications. Her first book, Hood, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016; she can’t talk about the next one for fear of jinxing it but also isn’t superstitious so screw that.

Becca Klaver’s third poetry collection, Ready for the World, was published this spring by Black Lawrence Press. She lives in Iowa City.

Cheryl Klein’s column, “Hold it Lightly,” appears monthly(ish) in MUTHA. She is the author of a story collection, The Commuters (City Works Press), and a novel, Lilac Mines (Manic D Press). Her stories and essays have appeared in Blunderbuss, The Normal School, Razorcake, and several anthologies. Her work has been honored by the MacDowell Colony and the Center for Cultural Innovation. Follow her on Twitter at @meadowbat.

Brian Kubarycz grew up in New York and came to Utah to study literature and creative writing. He completed an MFA at the U of U and then went on to the University of Washington to study medieval literature and critical theory. Though he greatly enjoyed that research, he changed course and returned to the U of U to resume creative writing and complete my PhD. While pursuing an academic career, he has maintained his early interest in visual art and music. In addition to publishing fiction and poetry, he has exhibited paintings and recorded albums with a number of local bands.  

Paula J. Lambert is a literary and visual artist from Columbus, Ohio. The focus of much of her recent work has been the anatomy of birds: by digging deep into their bones, beaks, and feathers, she has found her way to issues both deeply personal and broadly political. Author of several collections of poetry and a small-press publisher of poetry books and broadsides, she has founded and supported numerous public readings supporting the intersection of poetry and science, including Ohio’s annual Sun & Moon Poetry Festival. www.paulajlambert.com

David Todd Lawrence is Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Mn, where he teaches African-American literature and culture, folklore studies, and cultural studies. His book, When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics and Community in Pinhook, Mo (2018), co-authored with Elaine Lawless, is an ethnographic project done in collaboration with residents of Pinhook, Missouri, an African American town destroyed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers intentionally breached the Birds Point-New Madrid levee during the Mississippi River Flood of 2011.

Tresa LeClerc is a writer who currently lives in Melbourne, Australia. She teaches at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne and is a member of the non/fictionLab. Her writing has appeared in Djed, The Conversation, Wild Tongue Zine, Essay Daily and TEXT Journal.

Nathan Lemin is a MFA Candidate in Fiction at NAU currently at work on a novella about an Instagram poet in Minneapolis. If, in response to George Floyd's murder, you feel angry/confused/compelled to act, donating to https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate is a great way to combat to systemic racism in Minnesota. 

Dinah Lenney is the author of Coffee, just published in Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Other books include The Object Parade and Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir,  and she co-edited Brief Enounters: A collection of Contemporary Nonfiction with the late Judith Kitchen. Dinah teaches  for the Bennington Writing Seminars, and you can watch her TEDX talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBo-hCrKfLQ. 

Laurie Lindeen is the author of the memoir PETAL PUSHER. Her essays have appeared in anthologies, and in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Minneapolis-St. Paul magazine, and a variety of print and online publications. She currently teaches at a Minnesota university and through a variety of arts organizations. 

Joel Long’s book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Lessons in Disappearance (2012) and Knowing Time by Light (2010) were published by Blaine Creek Press. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. He lives in Salt Lake City where he teaches English and creative writing at Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s

Bojan Louis (Diné) is the author of the poetry collection Currents (BkMk Press 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona (The Guillotine Series 2012). He is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing and American Indian Studies programs at the University of Arizona.

Alice Lowe writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego CA. Recent essays appear in Ascent, Hobart, Stonecoast Review, and Superstition Review. She has been cited in the Best American Essays notables and nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Alice blogs at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

Brent Love is a writer, podcaster and dad of two small babes. Brent hosts the Covid-19 podcast "You and Me and Everyone We Know", an audiodiary made by everyday people living through the pandemic. You can find every episode (and sign up to be a guest!) at www.youmeeveryone.com. 

Bridget A. Lyons writes, edits, and recreates in Santa Cruz, CA.  At the moment, she's most proud of her three biggest quarantine accomplishments: surfing Steamer's Lane, perfecting her homemade cracker recipe, and being able to play and sing the awesome Heart song, "Crazy on You." You can find out more about her at bridgetalyons.com.

Patrick Madden is the author of three essay collections, Disparates (2020),  Sublime Physick (2016) and Quotidiana (2010). He co-edited After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays (2015) and co-translated the Selected Poems of Eduardo Milán (2012). He has received a Howard Foundation Fellowship and two Fulbright Fellowships. He is co-editor of the 21st Century Essays series at Ohio State University Press, co-editor of the literary journal Fourth Genre, and vice president of the NonfictioNOW Conference.

Tina Makereti writes essays, novels and short fiction. Her latest novel is The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke and she co-edited Black Marks on the White Page (2017), an anthology that celebrates Māori and Pasifika writing. In 2016 her story ‘Black Milk’ won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific region. Tina teaches a Masters workshop in creative writing at Victoria University, and has recently completed a collection of personal essays, This Compulsion in Us.

Rachel Marston lives in central Minnesota, where she has been isolating with her family, taking lots of walks, baking more homemade bread than she has in years, and working on a novel. She has recently had publications in Ocean State Review and Seneca Review.

Amelia Martens is the author of The Spoons in the Grass are There To Dig a Moat (Sarabande Books, 2016), and four chapbooks. In 2019, she received an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series, Exit 7, and two awesome daughters. 

Michael Martone’s recent books are Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta: Fictions and Science Fictions from Indiana and Beyond. His new book, The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone will appear this fall, published by BOA Limited Editions. He lives and putters in Tuscaloosa.

Marisa Mata is a writer from Fresno and a current MFA candidate at California Institute of the Arts. Her work has appeared in Entropy, the San Joaquin Review, and Flies, Cockroaches and Poets. When she isn’t writing, she’s traveling, snuggling with her cats, or exploring niche corners of the internet. Follow her journey @MarisaMata_.

Mel McCuin (she/they) is a queer, black, agender poet from the desert, who now resides in Newark, NJ. Follow Mel on twitter @tinysubwaypoet.

Michael McLane directs literary programming for Utah Humanities. He is an editor with both Sugar House Review and saltfront: studies in human habit(at). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Western Humanities Review, Dark Mountain, and High Country News, among other journals. He is currently a PhD candidate in the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria, University in Wellington, New Zealand. 

Amanda Meeks is a maker, artist, and librarian living in Tucson, AZ. As an artist and a maker, she is interested in zines, artist books, pins, painting, collage, letterpress, and developing a deeper social art practice. Her approach to community art and activism includes striving to facilitate and collaborate with critical generosity and radical empathy in all that she does and creates. Her practice as a librarian has focused on developing intentionally reflective, feminist and critical programs and instruction in order to integrate information literacy, art/making, and social justice. 

Brenda Miller is the author of five essay collections, most recently An Earlier Life (Ovenbird Books, 2016). She also co-authored Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction and The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World.Her work has received six Pushcart Prizes. She is a Professor of English at Western Washington University, and associate faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop.

Sarah Minor is the author of Bright Archive (Rescue Press 2020), Slim Confessions (Noemi Press 2021) and the digital chapbook The Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated (Essay Press). She teaches as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the Cleveland Insitute of Art. More at sarahceniaminor.com

Deborah Moeller is a writer, interrupted, whose works include many unpublished documents on her computer. She is an uncredited contributor on many, proposals, white papers, and blog posts for a variety of businesses. Her own blog is insidethebeehive.blogspot.com

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib, Bodies in Motion, The Stars Change, and twelve other titles. Other recent publications include stories for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, Perennial: A Garden Romance (Tincture), stories at Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed, and an essay in Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies.  www.maryannemohanraj.com

Debra Monroe is the author of two story collections, two novels, and two memoirs, On the Outskirts of Normal and My Unsentimental Education. Her essays have appeared in many publications including the New York Times, Longreads, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Rumpus, Salon. She is the editor of the textbook, Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology and teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University.

Ander Monson is a middlin-at-best chef and a poor musician. More info at otherelectrities.com or twitter.com/angermonsoon

Margaret Moore is a 2020 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Fairfield University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English/Creative Writing in May of 2020. Her work has appeared in Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Independent Catholic News, and Positive Writer among other publications. She is now pursuing her MFA in Fairfield University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.

Rachel Moritz is the author of two poetry books and co-editor of a collection of personal essays. She lives in Minneapolis in a house built in 1908. More at www.rachelmoritz.com.

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls. Her short stories and essays can be read in Antioch Review, Shenandoah, The Butter, on National Public Radio, and elsewhere. 

Keariene Muizz is a contemporary visual artist and writer who now lives and works in Nevada City.  Muizz’s interdisciplinary artwork is based on the psychological examination of the sculptures of Paris, France. An avid researcher she examined all twenty-four volumes of the “Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud” at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, which was recognized by the American Psychoanalytic Association in 2006, and applies the analytic process to her subjects. In addition to being a former Newport Beach based gallerist for half a decade she was also a live radio host who covered the art scenes of Los Angeles and Orange County for OC Caravan on KX 93.5 FM.  Muizz has also held a seat on the board of the Torrance Art Museum where she has also exhibited.  In 2014 she was the recipient of the George H.W. Bush Point of Light Award.

Oindrila Mukherjee teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University. Her work has appeared in Salon, Kenyon Review Online, The Colorado Review, The Oxford Anthology of Bengali Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She has written extensively about books and tennis for the Indian magazine Scroll.in, and is a contributing editor for the magazine Aster(ix). She is currently working on a novel and a collection of stories. You can follow her on Twitter at @oinkness   

David Mura’s newest book is A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing. A third generation Japanese American, he is the author of two memoirs, Turning Japanese, which won the Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book, and Where the Body Meets Memory. His novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. His four books of poetry include the National Poetry Contest winner After We Lost Our Way, The Colors of Desire, which won a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, Angels for the Burning, and The Last Incantations.

Mura has taught at VONA, the Loft, the Stonecoast MFA program, the University of Oregon, the University of Minnesota, and other institutions. He has worked as a trainer and Director of Training with the Innocent Classroom, a program that trains K-12 teachers to improve their relationships with students of color.

Stacy Murison’s work has appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Flash Fiction Magazine, Hobart, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, River Teeth, and The Rumpus among others.

Robert A. Neustadt is a hack musician and songwriter who works a day job as Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American Studies at Northern Arizona University. He has published two books on Latin American performance and experimental art and has written a play, Border Voices, that is (hopefully) forthcoming. In 2012, he co-produced, Border Songs, a sold-out double cd of music and spoken word about the border and immigration which raised nearly $100,000 for the humanitarian aid group, No More Deaths / No más muertes. All proceeds from his most recent album, Voluntary Return: Songs of Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees, go to No More Deaths and the Colibrí Center for Human Rights.

Rebecca Niederlander is a Los Angeles based visual artist, curator, and writer. She also co-founded the social practice BROODWORK, which investigated creative practice and family life through exhibitions, lectures, written projects, and events. Recent projects have included There's A Nova In the Bed next to Mine, which was included in an official project for the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy, the solo exhibition Axis Mundi at the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, and The Gravitational Pull of Satellites and Eclipses, a site-specific project for the Los Angeles International Airport. She is married with one daughter. www.becster.org @rebeccaniederlander

While Jack O’Boyle is an amateur multi-instrumentalist, he cannot play the drums.

Kama O'Connor is a runner, writer, teacher, and mother to Iz. She performs all these roles at 7000 feet, which makes all of it more difficult. Her first two novels were published by Cobblestone Press in 2020, but her essays and short stories can be found in Bird's Thumb, Zone 3, Blue Monday Review, O-Dark-Thirty, Bellesa, Military Spouse Magazine, Flag Live, and more. She's hopeful for a time in the near future when she can smile at a stranger and see them smile back.

Lisa M. O'Neill is an essayist and journalist who writes about social justice issues, politics, and popular culture with an intersectional lens. Lisa is the founder, host, and producer of The MATRIARCHITECTS, a podcast and platform which highlights change-makers who are building a culture that respects, values, and celebrates women. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Bitch Media, Bustle, Diagram, defunct, Edible Baja Arizona, Everyday Feminism, The Feminist Wire, GOOD, Good Housekeeping, Salon, and The Washington Post. Lisa is a singer/songwriter and maker of many playlists and wants to share her Community and Comfort in Quarantine playlist with you.

Karen Osborn is the author of five novels, Patchwork, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Between Earth and Sky, The River Road, Centerville, winner of the Independent Publishers Gold Award, and The Music Book, which is newly published. In reviews, she’s been compared to Ian McEwan, Jodi Picoult, and Russell Banks. The New York Times has called her work, “psychologically sophisticated,” and The Washington Post has said her writing is “an extraordinary effort to engage the American condition as we find it now.” www.karenosborn.net

Kim Hensley Owens is an English professor at NAU, where she teaches and directs the university writing program. Her scholarship focuses on rhetorical agency, embodied rhetoric, and pedagogy. She lives in Flagstaff with her husband, two kids, and three cats and lately spends a lot of time saying “Aww, look at the kitty.”

Jeremy Paden is the author of Under the Ocelot Sun

(Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2020) a 32 page illustrated,

bilingual book and several chapbooks of poems. His collection Autorretrato de una iguana co-won the first Poeta en Nueva York Prize by Valparaíso Ediciones. He tries to cook healthy food for his family. 

Linda Park writes and translates literary works of various genres. Her experiences as a queer woman and Korean American heavily influence her writing. She earned a B.A. in Theatre and Communication at the SUNY at Buffalo. She has also conducted sociolinguistic research on multilingualism and linguistic imperialism during her years of master’s study in Linguistics at the University of Iowa. Over the last 10 years, she has taught English to immigrant and international students from all around the world.

Elena Passarello is the human of the cats Columbo, Spooner, and Q.

Beth Peterson is the author of the essay collection, Dispatches from the End of Ice (Trinity University Press, 2019.) Beth’s poems and essays appear in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Mid-American Review, Terrain.org, the Pinch and other journals. Beth lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she teaches nonfiction and book editing at Grand Valley State University.

Stuart Phillips is a graduate of Ole Miss and Pepperdine Law School, now living in San Francisco. He’s an MFA student at Fairfield University, where he currently serves as Editor in Chief of CausewayLit. You can follow his attempts to master the semicolon at stuartphillips.work.

 Sean Prentiss is the brother of Jay Prentiss, who is recovering from COVID-19. Sean is also the author of Crosscut: Poems, a memoir-in-poems about his days as a trail builder. He is also the author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave, which won the National Outdoor Book Award. He and his family live on a lake in northern Vermont. http://www.seanprentiss.com/

Natanya Ann Pulley is Diné (Kinyaa’áani and Táchii’nii). She teaches at Colorado College and loves living near the mountains. She enjoys collage and low-stakes craft projects. Her debut story collection With Teeth was published by New Rivers Press (Oct. 2019) and her writing can be found at natanyapulley.com.

Jessy Randall's poems, comics, and other things have appeared in Poetry, Asimov's, and McSweeney's. Her most recent book is How to Tell If You Are Human (Pleiades, 2018), a collection of diagram poems. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.

Kerry Reilly's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review and elsewhere. Originally from Long Island, Reilly teaches at CU Boulder and lives with her husband and two Humane Society dogs, Harold and Wallace. One of her greatest accomplishments is teaching Harold, the blue tick coonhound, to come when called.

Chris J. Rice is an artist/writer settled in Los Angeles after earning an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her writing has been included in wigleaf’s top 50 (very) short fiction, nominated for a Pushcart, and named a prizewinner in Hunger Mountain’s 2016 Creative Non-Fiction contest. She has been published in [PANK] Online, The Rumpus, Entropy, and Catapult among other literary magazines.

Rashid V. Robinson lives and works in Salisbury, Md. He tries to write a decent poem from time to time, and rarely succeeds.

Corina Roche is a teacher and a graduate student at NAU.

Karrie Ross is a visual artist/creative explorer based in Los Angeles, CA. Her creativity is fueled by questions, internal associations with metaphors and lots of play. She writes, publishes, paints, sculpts, draws, develops projects, and right now her favorite subject is what she calls EGGs, there is a coloring book up on amazon. She spent 35-plus years in graphic design and still offers services of book design for self-publishing and indie publishers. In 2013 she decided she needed something to give back to the art community so she developed an art-history-book-project that publishes a yearly book www.ArtistArtandStory.com where artists send a photo and story of the focus year. She is certified in Feng Shui, StaNamRasayan healing, energy balancing, NLP, hypnosis, is a toastmaster, life coach, consultant, and mentor for artists, authors, and small businesses. She is an award winning author and artist. www.karrierossart.com

Mark Rozema is the author of two books: Road Trip and Sanctuary. He considers gardens, bees, dogs, glaciers, rivers, music, friends, and his family essential. He loves the photos of Iceland that are on the How We Are website. (Editor's note: thanks Mark!)

Weldon Ryckman has an MFA from Northern Arizona University and is spending quarantine with his family and loved ones.

Addyson Santese is Colorado-based writer for a mental health nonprofit and has lots of creative writing aspirations. In the "Before Times" she enjoyed hiking mountains and exploring the desert, but now she spends most of her days pole dancing at home and playing tug-of-war with her dog. More at addysonsantese.com. 

Zach Savich is the author of six books of poetry, including Daybed (Black Ocean, 2018), and two books of prose. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art and faculty with the PhD in Creativity at the University of the Arts. He co-edits Rescue Press's Open Prose Series.

Alysia Sawchyn is a Features Editor for The Rumpus. Her first book, A Fish Growing Lungs, was published this past June. She lives in the DC area.

Andrew Scheiber teaches literature and writing at the University of St. Thomas. As AJ Scheiber, he also writes and performs music as a solo artist and in the band Wilkinson James, which he and singing partner Liz Wilkinson co-founded in 2008. His new solo record Town Boy was released on April 14, 2020, just in time to catch the rising wave of the current pandemic.   

Rachel Schneider is a visual artist living in Albuquerque, NM. 

Kristine Schomaker is a multidisciplinary artist, art historian, publisher and mentor living and working at the Brewery artist complex in Los Angeles, California. She received degrees in Art History and Studio Art from California State University at Northridge. She actively participates in the Los Angeles Art Community and in 2014 founded Shoebox PR, a support network that focuses on creating community and offering mentorship and resources to artists. Kristine is also the publisher of Art and Cake a contemporary Los Angeles Art Magazine.

Zach Semel is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Nonfiction at Northern Arizona University. He is an avid Celtics fan, a wannabe psychoanalyst, and a lover of all things garlicky. Some of his other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Breath & Shadow, Waxing & Waning, the Read650 Jew-ish Anthology, The Nervous Breakdown, and other places.

Jesse Sensibar works and wanders the American Southwest. In his mind it’s a place where all the borders have disappeared except the wall. But the parrots and jaguars, the living and the dead, the saints and sinners, the blood and the crystal meth, all ride with him. He’s been lonesome forever and assumes he’ll die that way. On one side or the other, it really does not matter to him. The dead walk with him on both sides of the line. You can find more of his work thru his author website www.jessesensibar.com 

Sejal Shah's debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, (University of Georgia Press) launches June 1st. Her mother wants you to know that Sejal didn't have to be so honest in her essays. Follow her at @fictionalsejal on Twitter, Instagram, and FB.

Roanna “Rowie” Shebala is a Native American of the Dine (Navajo Nation) and Shiwi (Zuni Pueblo) Shebala is from White Cone, AZ. She is a current M.F.A. in Creative Writing student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Spoken Word artist who has been featured on four National Poetry Slam team, a five-time representative on the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and a two-time representative for the Individual World Poetry Slam. Her work has been featured in Button Poetry, Indian Country Today. Her works combine story, poetry, and performance.

Aurelie Sheehan is a writer and, of late, head of the Department of English at the U of A in Tucson.

Diane Sherry is a writer/director, author of the novels Elephant Milk and Earth to Skye. She started painting about two years ago, showing at the Craig Krull Gallery last August. 

Dave Shulman is a writer and artist in Los Angeles, best known for his columns, Sitegeist and Column Dave, in L.A. Weekly, 1998–2007.

Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, forthcoming; and two chapbooks, Passport (Beard of Bees Press, 2007) and Keep Right on Playing Through the Mirror Over the Water (Beard of Bees Press, 2010). He runs a manuscript consultation service at www.seansingerpoetry.com

Jake Skeets is the author of the Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, selected as a winner of National Poetry Series. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. His awards include a 2020 Whiting Award and 2018 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize.  Skeets holds an MFA in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.  

Shaniya Smith is Bitter Water, born for Near the Mountain People. As a Diné artist, fiction writer, and poet, she uses her work to bring awareness to bordertown violence and to advocate for restoring h0zh0 (wholeness). In May, she graduated with her MFA from Northern Arizona University. At the onset of the pandemic, she moved to the Navajo Nation to care for her community and family.

Christen N. Sowards is a writer, indie publisher, and game designer. He advocates fantasy gaming as a tool for finding (creating?) the everyday hero in ourselves. Christen is creator of the City of 7 Seraphs RPG campaign capstone setting and various other works. He lives in Utah with his husband, a clowder of cats, and a promising (this year) heirloom tomato garden. https://lostspherespublishing.wordpress.com/why/

Sarahmarie Specht-Bird is a teacher, thru-hiker, and aspiring writer from Kentucky. She holds two English-related MA degrees from Northern Arizona University, because two years in Flagstaff wasn’t quite enough. In 2019 she thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, after which she wrote a zine about it. She enjoys, among other things: crocheting, foraging, candlemaking, and talking in a high-pitched voice to her Pomeranian, Emma. For more fun stuff and trail dispatches, check out her website: sarahmariesb.com

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves as Co-Director of PEN Birmingham. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, President of Alabama State Poetry Society, Co-Founder of 100,000 Poets for Change Birmingham, and proud board member of Magic City Poetry Festival. A finalist for the 2019 Kurt Brown AWP Prize, the 2019 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the 2019 Frank McCourt Prize, and the 2019 Streetlight Magazine Poetry Contest, Alina won the 2019 River Heron Poetry Prize.  More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.

Jenny Spinner is a professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University where she teaches creative nonfiction and journalism and directs the university writing center. She is also a senior editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She is author of Of Women and the Essay: An Anthology from 1655 to 2000 (University of Georgia Press, 2018) and co-author of Tell Them I Didn’t Cry (Scribner’s, 2006) with her twin sister Jackie Spinner.

Julija Šukys is the author of three books, Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout, Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė and Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning. Šukys is a senior editor at Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and an associate professor of English at the University of Missouri, where she teaches the writing of creative nonfiction. In her off hours she tends a controversial front-yard vegetable garden, listens to birdsong from her elevated deck, and takes her nervous Shetland sheepdog on epic walks.

L.E. Sullivan has an MFA from NAU and her work has appeared in many lit mags you've heard of, and many more that you haven't. She teaches composition and creative writing in Texas.

Kelly Sundberg's memoir Goodbye Sweet Girl was published in 2018 by HarperCollins. Her essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines as well as the Best American Essays series. She lives in Columbus, Ohio and is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashland University.

Terri Sutton lives in Glendale, Wisconsin.  Her work has been published in the anthology Age Ain't Nothin But a Number, The Best of Milwaukee Writer's Circle and Solstice Literary Magazine.  

Jason Thayer is a writer from Oregon, now living the adjunct hustle in Ohio. His writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, Hobart, and others. He is an Assistant Editor for Brevity, and the Editor-in-Chief of Complete Sentence, a magazine of single-sentence prose.

Amy Vander Heiden is a writer and high school English teacher. 

Kelly Vaughn is a writer and editor for Arizona Highways magazine, based in Phoenix, Arizona. She loves her family, her dog and — as it turns out — screamingly ripe cantaloupe. 

Mireya S. Vela is a Mexican-American creative non-fiction writer, storyteller, and artist in Los Angeles. In her work, Ms. Vela addresses the needs of immigrant Mexican families and the disparities they face every day. She tackles issues of inequity and how ingrained societal systems support the injustice that contributes to continuing poverty and abuse. Ms. Vela received her Master of Fine Arts from Antioch University in 2018. She is the author of Vestiges of Courage, available through Amazon.

Julie Marie Wade is the author of 12 collections of poetry and prose, most recently the lyric essay collection Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (The Ohio State University Press, 2020) and the hybrid chapbook P*R*I*D*E (Vermont College of Fine Arts/Hunger Mountain, 2020). A recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Wade teaches at Florida International University in Miami and reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives in Dania Beach.

Erin Renee Wahl's work has appeared in Timber, Spiral Orb, Mojave River Review, and others. She has published two microchapbooks of poetry: Secure the Night (Bitterzoet Press) and Cloud Physics (Ghost City Press). Her work can be found via a well-crafted Google search. She currently resides in New Mexico where she spends her days working as an awesome Librarian.

Nicola Waldron recently wrote about sex for Creative Nonfiction, and romance (in miniature) for The New York Times. She writes poems and essays about loveliness and misery, dislocation and connection. She finds it hard to make up her mind, obviously. She’s won some awards you probably haven’t heard of. Sometimes she reviews things she feels sure about. Twisted root is her favorite yoga pose, but she does her best thinking in pigeon.

Ari Walker is the pen name of an American author whose writing has been published in literary media ranging from "The Beloit Fiction Journal" to Huffpo. Ari is currently living in Israel and finishing writing her first novel, which is about a contemporary woman remembering her past-life 4,000 years ago in Ancient Canaan.

Jacklyn Walling is an MFA student studying creative nonfiction at Northern Arizona University. She has a vested interest in horses and has been published in the magazine Chrome. Much of her inspiration for writing comes from her background of riding, training, and caring for horses. Everything in life makes more sense when it’s related to equines. She currently writes for NAU News and works as a freelance science and SEO writer. Once the pandemic subsides she will be found most evenings out on the dance floor swing dancing to classics.

Wendy S. Walters is an author whose work blends poetry, nonfiction cultural commentary, and lyric essays to explore themes of race, gender, environment, and belonging in America. She is the author of a book of prose, Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal. She is also the author of two books of poems, Troy, Michigan and Longer I Wait, More You Love Me.

Liz Wilkinson teaches writing and literature. Sings for the band Wilkinson James. On a good day can also do a lot of pushups.

Marco Wilkinson lives in San Diego with his partner Kazim, his two cats Minu and Wiley, his 79-year old mom Irma, three papaya trees, one fig tree, five palms, two citrus trees, two avocado trees, one pomegranate shrub, lots of other photosynthesizing companions, and something currently skittering around in the attic crawlspace. He writes lyric objects, essays and such. His book, Madder, will be published in 2021 by Coffee House Press.

Crystal Williams is the author of four collections of poems. Originally from Detroit, she currently lives in Jamaica Plain, MA

Steve (S.E.) Willis is a professional musician and piano rebuilder.  He has performed with artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddly, Albert King, Elvin Bishop, Zigaboo Modeliste, Jimmy Rogers, and James Cotton.  He has released seven CDs of mostly original music and is currently locked down with a 7’ Baldwin Grand that was built in 1938.

Emily Withnall lives in Missoula, Montana, with her two teens and three cats. Her writing appears in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Gay Magazine, River Teeth, The Progressive Magazine, and other publications. Emily is at work on a book about domestic violence and hydraulic fracturing. To read her work, visit emilywithnall.com. 

Eve Wood is both a distinguished critic and artist. She was represented for six years by Western Project and before that at Susanne Vielmetter; Los Angeles Projects. She has exhibited her work at numerous galleries and museums including Angles Gallery, The Huntington Beach Museum of Art, The Vincent Price Museum, The Western Carolina University Museum and The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, etc. Her art criticism has appeared in many magazines including Riot Material, Flash Art, Artnet.com, Tema Celeste, Flavorpill, White Hot Magazine, Artillery, Art ltd. New York Arts, Angelino Magazine, Art Papers, Bridge, ArtUS, Artweek, Latin Arts.com, Art Review and Bomb. She is also the author of five books of poetry published by university presses. She is a professor at Cal State University Northridge in the Art Department. 

Mason Wray is from Decatur, Georgia and now lives in Oxford, Mississippi. His work is forthcoming in Ploughshares and has appeared previously in the Southwest Review. He is the poetry editor at Yalobusha Review. 

Amy Wright is the author of three poetry books. She lives and teaches in Tennessee, where she also edits Zone 3 journal and Zone 3 Press. Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert, is forthcoming in 2021 from Sarabande Books.

Kao Kalia Yang is the author of the award-winning books, The Latehomecomer, The Song Poet, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color, and the children's book, A Map Into the World. This year, she'll add three more books two her body of work: two more children's books, The Shared Room and The Most Beautiful Thing, and a collective memoir Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang lives in St. Paul, in a working class neighborhood full of flowers by a haunted lake. 

Gretchen Younghans lives and teaches in Berlin, Germany.

Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is a poet and essayist from Cebu, Philippines. He received an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Washington University in St Louis on a Fulbright Scholarship, and has recently completed an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. His first book of poems, The Highest Hiding Place was given the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award.