Craft Articles

The Poet as God and Failure by Chris McCrackin
Chris McCrackin was born and raised on a small farm in Georgia and holds an undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University in English and Classics. Currently, he is pursuing an MA in Classics at the University of Georgia as a Beinecke Scholar and Osbourne Fellow. Currently, his academic and creative interests include indigeneity, disability studies, classical reception theory, and hybridity.

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.
GRIST CRAFT ARTICLES

This Is Not a Day at the Fair: On Poetry and PTSD by Jennifer Metsker
Jennifer Metsker’s poetry collection Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise was published by New Issues Press. Her poetry has appeared in Beloit, Rhino, Birdfeast, Gulf Coast, The Cream City Review and other journals. Her audio poetry has been featured on the BBC Radio’s Short Cuts. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is the Writing Coordinator at the Stamps School of Art and Design.

An Interview with Leah Silvieus | by Hope Fischbach
Leah Silvieus is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Arabilis (Sundress Publications 2019), and is the co-editor with Lee Herrick of The World I Leave You: An Anthology of Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020). She is a Kundiman fellow, holds degrees from Whitworth University and the University of Miami, and is currently studying literature and religion at Yale Divinity School.

The Poet as God and Failure by Chris McCrackin
Chris McCrackin was born and raised on a small farm in Georgia and holds an undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee University in English and Classics. Currently, he is pursuing an MA in Classics at the University of Georgia as a Beinecke Scholar and Osbourne Fellow. Currently, his academic and creative interests include indigeneity, disability studies, classical reception theory, and hybridity.

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.
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