Aaron’s Trash
Nitya Gupta (she/her) is a fiction writer from Chicago. She’s currently an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was a 2023 Tin House Scholar and a finalist for the 2022 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review.
Not Everyone Gets To Go To Tennessee
Andrew Furman is a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and teaches in its MFA program in Creative Writing. Recent stories and essays have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, Santa Monica Review, Terrain.org, and Willow Springs. His books include the novels Jewfish (Little Curlew Press, 2020) and Goldens are Here (Green Writers Press, 2018), and the memoir, Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida (University Press of Florida, 2014), which was named a finalist for the ASLE Environmental Book Award. You can find him at andrewfurmanwriter.com.
Dream of a Unified Field
Josh Emmons has published two novels with Scribner and a short story collection with Dzanc Books, plus fiction in ZYZZYVA, Ecotone, Chicago Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, West Branch, The American Scholar, Joyland, The New York Times and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.
The Judas Tree
Erica Wright is the author of seven books, including the poetry collection All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press) and the essay collection Snake (Bloomsbury). She was the poetry editor of Guernica for more than a decade.
If I Erase My Body
Jennifer Whalen (she/her) is a poet & educator from the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio area. She is the author of the poetry collection Eveningful (2024), which was selected by Rick Barot as the winner of the 2022 Lightscatter Press Prize. Her poems can be found in Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, New South, Glass: A Journal for Poetry, The Boiler, & elsewhere. She previously served as writer-in-residence at Texas State University’s Clark House and currently teaches English at the University of Illinois Springfield.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be the Culmination of Things I Took for Granted
Hiba Tahir is a YA author and 2022 graduate of the University of Arkansas MFA, where she received the Carolyn Walton Cole Endowment Fund, the J. Chester and Freda S. Johnson Graduate Fellowship, and the James T. Whitehead Award. She is a 2020 recipient of an Artists 360 Grant from Mid-America Arts Alliance and a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council.
Angels
Susannah Sheffer’s poetry collections are This Kind of Knowing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2013), Break and Enter (Kelsay Books, 2021), and a new book forthcoming from Cornerstone Press’s Portage Poetry Series in early 2025. Her nonfiction books include Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys (Vanderbilt University Press, 2013). She lives in Western Massachusetts.
The Ferry
John Poch’s most recent books are God’s Poems: The Beauty of Poetry and the Christian Imagination (St. Augustine’s Press 2022) and Notes on the Poet (Measure Press 2023).
my ruins
Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Jerry has held residencies at MadCowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and is a Helix Fellow with Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc, IG: @apophatic_attic.
Bliss as a Metaphor for the Catenary Curve
Michael T. Lawson studied poetry and biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a PhD in the latter and fostering a love of the former. His work has been published in Tar River Poetry, Ninth Letter, Nimrod International Journal, and Four Way Review, among others. He currently resides in Boston, MA, where he works as a data analyst.