The Benefits of Not Knowing Your Audience by Jen Grow
Jen Grow’s work has appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, About Place Journal, The Sun Magazine, The GSU Review, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review and many others. Her debut story collection, My Life as a Mermaid, won the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. She was also awarded the 2016 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize for her work as well as a Ruby Award from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and two Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. She lives in Baltimore and can be reached at www.jengrow.com.
The Dark Pages: Updating Patterns of Rape in Fiction by Zoe Marzo
Zoe Marzo is a writer in Los Angeles. She has a B.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She’s a doctoral student in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Popshot Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, and other publications.
Chiasmus by Matthew Wimberley
Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Daniel Boone’s Window (LSU, 2020), selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poetry series, and All the Great Territories (SIU, 2020), winner of the 2018 Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book award, winner of the Weatherford Award. Winner of the 2015 William Matthews Prize from the Asheville Poetry Review, his work was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology and his writing has appeared most recently in the Poem-a-Day series from the Academy of American Poets. Wimberley received his MFA from NYU where he worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC.
Cultivating Empathy through Mimetic Forms by Brenna Womer
Brenna Womer is an experimental prose writer, poet, and professor. She is the author of honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and two chapbooks, Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance (C&R Press, 2018) and cost of living (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Shenandoah and a contributing editor for Story Magazine.
Being Nobody, or How I Was Radicalized by Emily Dickinson | by M. Jamie Zuckerman
M Jaime Zuckerman is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Letters to Melville (Ghost Proposal, 2018) as well as poems in BOAAT, Diode, Fairy Tale Review, Hunger Mountain, Palette, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She serves as the associate editor for Sixth Finch and a senior reader for Ploughshares. She grew up in the woods but now lives and teaches in Boston, MA.
On Place | by Sharon Fagan McDermott & When I Say Here | by M.C. Benner Dixon
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent collection of poetry, Life Without Furniture, published by Jacar Press (2018) wrestles with finding and feeling at home in the world and seeking sanctuary in an often challenging life. As National Book Award winning poet Terrance Hayes says about this new collection: “Sharon Fagan McDermott inhabits the spaces between the common and the uncommon…The whole world, visible and invisible, inhabits this wonderful new book.” Additionally, Fagan McDermott has published three chapbook collections, Voluptuous, Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, 2005), and Bitter Acoustic, which won the 2011 Jacar Press Chapbook competition.
M.C. Benner Dixon lives, writes, and grows things in Pittsburgh, PA. Working in both prose and poetry, her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review Online, Sampsonia Way, SLICE Magazine, Appalachian Review, Vastarien, HeartWood Literary Magazine, pacificREVIEW, Paperbark Literary Magazine, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and elsewhere.
Dramatic Situation: On Listening for Story in Poetry | by A. Loudermilk
A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems can be found in publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smaritsh Pace, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Tin House, and his essays in The Writer’s Chronicle, PopMatters, Midwest Quarterly, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College and Maryland Institute College of Arts.
Dissent by Descent—Diving into the Madness and Rejecting Genre Boundaries | by Cassidy McCants
Cassidy McCants is a writer and editor from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her M.F.A. in fiction writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She edits for Nimrod Journal and is creator/editor of Apple in the Dark. Her prose has appeared in The Lascaux Review, Liars’ League NYC, Gravel, The Idle Class, filling Station, Witch Craft Magazine, and other publications. She won the 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest from The Conium Review, and her stories have received honorable mentions from Glimmer Train Press. She is a 2020 Artist INC fellow.
The Nonfiction of Skin | by Alizabeth Worley
Alizabeth Worley lives in Utah with her husband, Michael, and their two sons, just north of BYU where she received an MFA. She was a 2016 poetry winner of the AWP Intro Journals award and her essays, poems, and illustrated works have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Hobart, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere. You can find more of her work at alizabethworley.com.
What Is Poetry For? | by James McKee
James McKee enjoys failing in his dogged attempts to keep pace with the unrelenting cultural onslaught of late-imperial Gotham. His debut poetry collection, The Stargazers, was published in the spring of 2020, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Ohio Review, New World Writing, The Ocotillo Review, Illuminations, CutBank, The Raintown Review, Flyway, Saranac Review, THINK, The Midwest Quarterly, Xavier Review, and elsewhere. He spends his free time, when not writing or reading, traveling less than he would like and brooding more than he can help.