Issue Three: October 2009
Mary Biddinger is the author of Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007) and the chapbook Saint Monica (forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Copper Nickel, diode, Gulf Coast, North American Review, Passages North, Third Coast, and many other journals. She is the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, co-editor-in-chief of Barn Owl Review, and director of the NEOMFA: Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing and literature at The University of Akron.
Greg Bottoms is the author of a memoir, Angelhead, a documentary narrative, The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art, and two genre-blurring collections of prose, Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks and Fight Scenes.
Anna Clark's writing has appeared in The American Prospect Online, AlterNet, Blood Lotus, Utne Reader, Common Dreams, Women's eNews, Religion Dispatches, The Women's International Perspective, ColorLines, Bitch Magazine, Writer's Journal, RH Reality Check, truthout, and many other publications. She edits the literary and social justice website, Isak. She lives and writes from Detroit, MI.
Matthew Derby is the author of Super Flat Times: Stories (2003 Back Bay Books). His writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Conjunctions, Fence, and The Believer, where he served as an editor for several years.
Kelley Evans's essay “Body Composition,” published in Fourth Genre, was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver. Her work has also appeared in Harpur Palate, Brevity, and HerMark 2010. She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2002 and a PhD in Creative Nonfiction from Ohio University in 2008. She blogs at http://traipsingmeridians.blogspot.com/.
Roxane Gay's writing appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Monkeybicycle, Keyhole, Annalemma, and others. She is the associate editor of PANK and has a pretty website at http://www.roxanegay.com.
An honors graduate of the Brooklyn streets, where he grew up across from the former headquarters of Murder Inc., Hesh Kestin reported on war and civil mayhem in the Mideast, Europe and Africa, and—as European correspondent for Forbes—on global terrorism and its nastier counterpart, global business. Cited by MediaGuide for best foreign correspondence, his work has appeared in publications as diverse as Newsday, The Jerusalem Post, Inc. and Playboy. After hanging up his trenchcoat Kestin founded two prize-winning newspapers, the independent Israeli daily The Nation and The American, a weekly for expatriates. He is the author of 21st Century Management, non-fiction about a software company whose revolutionary methods landed its leadership behind bars, and a much-praised recently published collection of novellas, Based On A True Story, set in pre-WWII Polynesia, Kenya and Hollywood. As a citizen of both the US and Israel, for eighteen years it was common for Kestin to come home to his family from active duty in the Israel Defense Forces, then change into civilian clothes to return to the same battlefields as a correspondent. “You never stop being afraid,” he says today. “But having grown up in a neighborhood where every day was a war, I had a unique advantage: I was used to it.”
Diane Leach's essays and reviews appear regularly on PopMatters.com and January Magazine. A Detroit native, she now lives in Northern California. She can be reached via e-mail at Dianesleach@gmail.com.
Norman Lock is the author of A History of the Imagination (novel, Fiction Collective Two), ‘The Book of Supplemental Diagrams’ for Marco Knauff’s Universe (novella, Ravenna Press), The Long Rowing Unto Morning and The King of Sweden (novels, Ravenna Press), Two Plays for Radio (Triple Press), and, writing as George Belden, Land of the Snow Men (novella, Calamari Press and, in Japanese, from Kawade Shobo). Two short-prose collections – Joseph Cornell’s Operas and Émigrés – were published by Elimae Books and subsequently issued, in Turkish, by an Istanbul publisher as part of its New World Writing series. Together with Grim Tales, they were brought out by Triple Press as Trio. Cirque du Calder, a hand-made artist’s book with afterword by Gordon Lish, was presented by The Rogue Literary Society. Shadowplay, a novel, was released in September, 2009, by Ellipsis Press. Three Plays is due in 2010 from Noemi Press. Lock is represented by Tuttle-Mori Agency in Japan and Per Lauke Verlag in Germany. Stage plays include Water Music, Favorite Sports of the Martyrs, Mounting Panic, The Sinking Houses, The Contract, and The House of Correction (Broadway Play Publishing) – voted one of the best plays of 1988 and 1994 by The Los Angeles Times and critically acclaimed as the best new play of the 1996 Edinburgh Theatre Festival. Women in Hiding, The Shining Man, The Primate House, and Money, Power & Greed were broadcast by wdr, Germany. A screen play, The Body Shop, was produced by the American Film Institute and screened in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, and New York. Lock received the Aga Kahn Prize for fiction, given by The Paris Review, in 1979, a 1999 prose fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and a 2009 prose fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Josh Maday lives in Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New York Tyrant, Action Yes, Apostrophe Cast, elimae, Barrelhouse, Keyhole Magazine, Word Riot, Lamination Colony, and elsewhere. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and can be found online at http://joshmaday.blogspot.com.
John Madera fell down a chute and landed into nothing. After peeling himself up from the cold ground, he blindly walked—arms flailing—and found a wall, and then fell to his knees, trailed his fingers along the groove where the ground met the wall, and discovered that it formed a square. The box was empty. Though his screams did not bring help, the echoes convinced him that the ceiling was extraordinarily high. By the time the reverberations began, his leathery skin flapped on his bones like worn canvas on a scaffold. John kept thinking that his wife would soon shake him awake, wipe his tear and sweat wet face, and swear he was safe. But no, this was what it was and there would be no happy whatevers. The reverberations gave way to a shrill screeching. As the walls closed in, John thought of how, as he lay on a blanket in one of Prospect Park’s vast green fields, she had trailed a blade of grass across his cheeks, how it had crushed him like nothing before.
Jill Meyers is the editor of American Short Fiction. Her book reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Mid-American Review as well as on Bookslut.
Rick Moody is the author of five novels (including The Ice Storm and The Diviners), three collections of stories, and a memoir, The Black Veil. A volume of collage poems, Fair Use, appeared in 2000. In July 2010, Little, Brown and Company will publish his new novel, The Four Fingers of Death.
Sarah Norek is a graduate of the University of Wyoming's MFA Program in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Ache Magazine, The Open Face Sandwich, and The Furnace Review, and is forthcoming in The New Anonymous and Caketrain.
Peter Jay Shippy is the author of Thieves’ Latin (University of Iowa Press, 2003), Alphaville (BlazeVOX BOOKS, 2006) and How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic (Rose Metal Press, 2007). He has published widely, including The American Poetry Review, The Boston Globe, Iowa Review and Ploughshares. Shippy teaches literature and writing at Emerson College in Boston.
Ross White is the editor of Inch, a magazine of short poetry and microfiction, and the publisher of Bull City Press. His work has appeared on Poetry Daily and in Tar River Poetry, Carolina Quarterly, and New England Review, among others. Ross is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also works in the School of Education.
Catherine Zeidler's fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Best American Fantasy, Hobart, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She has an MFA from the University of Michigan and a small website (catpatz.com). She lives in Denmark.