Issue Fifty-Eight: May 2014
Amy Benson's book, The Sparkling-Eyed Boy (Houghton Mifflin 2004), was the 2003 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize winner in creative nonfiction, sponsored by Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Recent work has appeared in journals such as Agni, BOMB, Boston Review, New England Review, Triquarterly, PANK, diagram, Seneca Review, Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, and Black Warrior Review. She teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University and is the co-founder of the First Person Plural Reading Series in Harlem.
Russell Brakefield teaches in the English Department at the University of Michigan. His most recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Southern Indiana Review, Hobart, The NY Quarterly, and Language Lessons: An Anthology of Poetry, Prose, and Music published by Third Man Records.
Kelli J. Christenson is a recent graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she now lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, with her (fellow Tex-pat) husband in their green-shuttered shotgun double. This is her first publication.
Paul Curran was born in England, grew up in Australia, and lives in Japan. His novel Left Hand is available from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Aubrey Hirsch's work has appeared in Hobart, American Short Fiction, Third Coast, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She is the author of a short story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, and a chapbook, This Will Be His Legacy.
Colie Hoffman is a poet, editor, essayist, and recent transplant to Portland, OR from New York. She has been a writer in residence at Writers Omi in upstate New York and at Sangam House in South India, for which she won the M Literary Residency. Her poems have appeared on Wave Farm radio and in Sixth Finch, TYPO, Blood Orange Review, and other journals.
Nick Kocz's short stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Five Chapters, Mid-American Review, and The Pinch. A past recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, he now lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, with his wife and three rambunctious children.
Michael Jeffrey Lee is the author of Something in My Eye, a collection of stories. Fresher, more recent stories have appeared in Gigantic, XO Orpheus, and Room 220. Soon he will have even more stories, and who knows where they will go? He lives in New Orleans.
Norman Lock’s recent books are The Boy and His Winter and Love Among the Particles (Bellevue Literary Press), In the Time of Rat (Ravenna Press), Pieces for Small Orchestra & Other Fictions (Spuyten Duyvil Press), Three Plays (Noemi Press), and Grim Tales (Mud Luscious Press/Dzanc). The House of Correction (Broadway Play Publishing) played recently in Istanbul, Athens, and Torun, Poland. Mounting Panic was broadcast by WDR Germany, in 2013. Lock has won The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections The Babies and Tsim Tsum. Her poems and stories have recently appeared or are forthcoming in American Short Fiction, B O D Y, The Believer, Black Warrior Review, and in the anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. She lives in Athens, Georgia where she is completing a collection of small fictions.
Joshua Mensch grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems have appeared most recently in Smartish Pace and The Economy Weekly. He lives in Prague, Czech Republic, where he edits the literary journal B O D Y.
James Orbesen is a writer and adjunct living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Jacobin, The New Humanism, Salon, Bookslut, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He blogs, occasionally, at Graphically Apparent.
Christopher Parks is a psychologist, teacher, and writer from Detroit. For decades he has been active in issues of homelessness. His work appears in Rattle, Elimae, My Favorite Bullet, The Bicycle Review, and other journals.
Veronica Popp is a writer and teacher. She has a BA from Elmhurst College in English and History, and an MA in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University. She teaches composition, research and literature at College of DuPage, Triton College and Elmhurst College. She is currently writing a novel about cranberry walnut loaf, J.D. Salinger and Christmas in July.
Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collection Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press 2011) and the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions 2013). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The New Republic, Subtropics, and elsewhere.
Angela Woodward's short fiction has appeared recently in Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, and Redactions. She is the author of the collection The Human Mind and the novel End of the Fire Cult, both from Ravenna Press.