Contributors

Linsey Abrams’ most recent novel is Our History in New York. Her stories have been published in such magazines as Bomb, New Directions Annual and Glimmer Train. Most recently, she was a finalist for the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize and a recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York.

Leslie Adams earned her MA in English from Mississippi State University, where she received the Eugene Butler and the Albert Camus Creative Writing Scholarships. She recently participated in the SonEdna Foundation Writer’s Showcase, which works to promote the arts in the Mississippi Delta. She lectures at Mississippi State.

Matt Baker’s work appears in The Saint Ann’s Review, Kansas City Star, Philadelphia Inquirer, Permafrost, FRiGG, Storyglossia and elsewhere. His novel, Drag the Darkness Down, will be published later this year. He lives in Little Rock where he’s the Circulation Director at The Oxford American.

Barbara Benoit lives in Brattleboro, Vermont. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from New England College and an undergraduate degree in jazz piano. Her poems appear in Babel Fruit and Blueline.

Vanessa Blakeslee earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She divides her time between Florida and Piedades de Santa Ana, Costa Rica and is completing a short story collection. In May 2009, she will lead a writers’ retreat in Jaco Beach, Costa Rica.

Jane Bradley has published two books of fiction and her stories have appeared in numerous journals. Her story collection Power Lines was listed as an “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Times Book Review. Her novella Living Doll is used in many graduate school and intern programs for professionals who work with emotionally disturbed children. She has completed a new collection of stories titled, Are We Lucky Yet?, and is currently at work on a novel, You Believers.

Chuck Carlise’s poetry appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Harpur Palate, and others. He was awarded the C.T. Wright Poetry Prize in 2003, and more recently, fellowships from Wildacres Retreat and the Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow. He is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Houston and the Non-Fiction Editor of Gulf Coast.

Jasmin Darznik was born in Tehran, Iran and received her PhD in English from Princeton University. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ZYZZYVA, Alimentum and others. A current Steinbeck Fellow in creative writing, she has earned honors and distinctions from The Iowa Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, the Marin Arts Council, and the San Francisco Foundation.

Lynnell Edwards is the author of two collections of poetry: The Highwayman’s Wife (2007) and The Farmer’s Daughter (2003), both from Red Hen Press. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she teaches at Bellarmine University and is Director of the Writing Center.

Janet Fisher lives near Huddersfield, in the north of England. Until recently she was co-Director of The Poetry Business, a publishing and writing development agency. Her third collection, Brittle Bones, was published in July 2008 by Salt.

Megan Gannon’s poems appear in Pleiades, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Notre Dame Review, and Best American Poetry 2006. A collaboration chapbook with writers John Chavez, Rachel May, and Joshua Ware entitled I, NE has just been published by Smallfires Press. She is married to the poet Miles Waggener.

C. E. Giaimo studied creative writing and English at Princeton University, after which she moved to England to read for a degree in literature at Oxford. Her writing has been published in the Nassau Literary Review, Pegasus, and the anthology License to Write. She currently works in lower Manhattan.

Robert Grunst teaches at The College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN. “The Linden, the Basswood” comes from a manuscript entitled The Wreck of the Twilight. Other poems are forthcoming at American Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and Nimrod. His first book, The Smallest Bird in North America, was published by New Issues Press.

Janice N. Harrington’s Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (2007) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize from BOA Editions and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Formerly a librarian and a professional storyteller, she now teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.

Michael Hawley’s short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art; Boston Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He studied playwriting at New York University and lives in New York City. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.

David Hernandez’s collections include Always Danger (2006) and A House Waiting for Music (2003). His poems have appeared in FIELD, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and TriQuarterly. David lives in Long Beach, California and is married to writer Lisa Glatt.

Shanye Huang was born and raised in Guangxi Zhuang Region of Southwest China, which is known for vibrant folk arts by the Zhuang, Hmong, and Yao ethnicities. He has maintained a lifelong fascination with the power, mystery and beauty of Chinese folk art and culture. His work can be viewed at www.ShanyeHuang.com

Melanie Jordan’s poems have appeared in Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Third Coast, Diagram, Poetry Southeast, Southern Indiana Review, Pebble Lake Review, and others. Her first manuscript of poems, The Broken Zoo, is a finalist in the 2008 Switchback Books Gatewood Prize. She teaches at the University of West Georgia.

Ilyse Kusnetz’s poems have most recently appeared in Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Arroyo Literary Review and Saw Palm, and she is the author of a chapbook, The Gravity of Falling (La Vita Poetica Press, 2006). She teaches at Valencia Community College.

Steve Langan is the author of a collection of poems, Freezing, and a chapbook, Notes on Exile and Other Poems. His collection Meet Me at the Happy Bar is forthcoming from BlazeVOX. His poems are in recent issues of Drunken Boat, Fence, The Iowa Review, Octopus, Poetry Salzburg Review and Zoland Poetry.

Michael Levan received his MFA from Western Michigan University and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee, where he is assistant poetry editor of Grist. His poems and reviews can be found in Nimrod, CutBank, and Third Coast.

Elizabeth Levitski lives in the northwoods of Wisconsin where she raises and races sled dogs. She is a woodworking artist specializing in free form rustic furniture, using only salvaged wood. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry International, and Sou’Wester, among others.

Beth Marzoni’s poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Fifth Wednesday, and Controlled Burn, among others. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing at Western Michigan University.

Sandra McPherson’s tenth collection, Expectation Days, was published in 2007 by University of Illinois Press. She teaches at the University of California at Davis. Also, she is Editor and Publisher of Swan Scythe Press.

Jacques Rancourt divides his time between southern and central Maine. His work has appeared in Ripple, Rumble, Sandy River Review, and has been anthologized in Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2008.

Anne Shaw is the author of Undertow (Persea Books), winner of the 2007 Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize. Her work appears in Literal Latté, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and New American Writing. Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and From the Fishouse.

Jane Wampler is a recipient of Poets & Writers magazine Writer’s Exchange Award and a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship in poetry. Her poems have been published in The Missouri Review, Seneca Review, Atlanta Review and other journals. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

Lesley Wheeler’s books include Heathen (forthcoming from C&R Press) and Voicing American Poetry (Cornell University Press). Her poems appear in Poetry, AGNI, Witness, and other journals. She is a professor of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.