Craft Articles

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.

“That they are there”: On George Oppen and the Role of Poetry | by Jonathan Farmer
Jonathan Farmer is the author of That Peculiar Affirmative: On the Social Life of Poems and the poetry editor and editor in chief of At Length. He teaches middle and high school English, and he lives in Durham, NC.

Poets of Dos Lenguas | by Alejandro Lemus-Gomez
Alejandro Lemus-Gomez is a Davies-Jackson Scholar of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge. He was a finalist for the 2020 C.D. Wright Emerging Poet’s Prize and a 2019 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets fellow. His poetry and academic work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Journal, the Afro-Hispanic Review, storySouth, The Indiana Review Online, and other journals.

Preparing to Write: Outlines in Fiction Writing | by James McNulty
James McNulty holds an MFA in Fiction from VCFA; he’s been managing fiction editor of Driftwood Press for nearly a decade.
GRIST CRAFT ARTICLES

“I Write for My Beloveds”: An Interview with Javeria Hasnain
Javeria Hasnain is a poet, translator, and educator from Karachi, and the author of SIN (Chestnut Review, 2024). Her poetry and prose have appeared widely, including in Pleiades, Poet Lore, Foglifter, beestung, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Poetry from The New School, and has received fellowships and scholarships from Fulbright, Teachers & Writers, and Sewanee Writers Conference, among others.
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears in Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is an Assistant Editor at The Offing. She’s a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. Her work has been supported by Brooklyn Poets, The Hambidge Center, The Peter Bullough Foundation, VCCA, among others. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. Her work is available at www.shlaghaborah.com.

Risking the Hug: An Examination of Sentimentality and Sincerity in Lars and the Real Girl by Daniel Abiva Hunt
Daniel Abiva Hunt holds an MFA from the University of Houston. His stories and essays have appeared in New England Review, The Masters Review, CRAFT, Maine Review, Portland Review, and elsewhere. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches and studies fiction.

Poetic Endings: Nailing Down the Threshold by Dia Calhoun and Deborah Bacharach
Deborah Bacharach (left photo) is the author of two full length poetry collections Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her poems, book reviews and essays have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, New Letters, Poet Lore and The Writer’s Chronicle among many others, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is currently a poetry reader for SWWIM and Whale Road Review and a mentor with PEN America. She lives in Seattle. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.
Dia Calhoun (right photo) is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm (Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She has won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; published poems and essays in The Nashville Review, The Writer’s Chronicle; EcoTheo Review; MORIA Literary Magazine; And Blue Will Rise Over Yellow: An International Poetry Anthology for Ukraine, and others. She co-founded readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize and taught creative writing at Seattle University and Stony Brook University. More at diacalhoun.com.

The Manananggal as Mythmaking by Melanie Manuel
Melanie H. Manuel is a Filipina American poet. She obtained her BA from UC Davis in English and Asian American Studies and is currently attending SDSU for her MFA in poetry. She is a recipient of the Prebys Creative Writing Scholarship, the Master’s Research Fellowship, and most recently, the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship. She is the Production Editor for PIOnline and teaches in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies department. Her work has been published by Third Iris Zine and North American Review, and she has forthcoming work with minnesota review, Porkbelly Press, and Zone 3.
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