2021 Fall

Ann R. Fischer is a photographer who has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions since 2011. She was an active member of Oak Street Art, an artists’ collective in Illinois, before moving to northeast Ohio, and in 2018 one of her abstract images took first place in the Shrode Photography Competition. Before turning to photography, she spent two decades as a researcher and professor of psychology.

Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads and Millennial Teeth, as well as two chapbooks from Unicorn Press: The Use of the World and Of Air and Earth. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Five Points, The Southern Review, The Best American Poetry 2017, and two editions of The Pushcart Prize, as well as other journals and anthologies. Albergotti is a professor of English at Coastal Carolina University.

Michael Bazzett’s fifth book of poems, The Echo Chamber, was published by Milkweed Editions in October 2021. His work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, The American Poetry Review, The Sun, The Nation, and Ploughshares, and his verse translation of the Mayan creation epic, The Popol Vuh, was named one of 2018’s best  books of poetry by The New York Times. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, Bazzett lives in Minneapolis.

Despy Boutris’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, AGNI, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Currently, Boutris lives in California and serves as editor-in-chief of The West Review.

Russell Brakefield is the author of Field Recordings. His writing has appeared in the Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. Brakefield teaches writing at the University Writing Program at the University of Denver.

Brian Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape. They have work in Pleiades, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. They are an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Fellow and author of The Fire Eater. His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, POETRY, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has been a finalist for the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize Competition and the 2020 National Poetry Series. Currently, Diaz is a guest editor for Frontier Poetry and Palette Poetry.

Carina Finn is the author of several collections of poetry, including Lemonworld & Other Poems, Invisible Reveille, and The Grey Bird: Thirteen Emoji Poems in Translation. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame, where she was the recipient of a Nicholas Sparks Fellowship. She works as an editor for Bustle Digital Group, and as a freelance food writer and photographer for publications including The Kitchn, Bon Appétit, Eater, and others. Finn is represented by Linda Epstein of Emerald City Literary Agency.

Idris Goodwin is a multiple award-winning playwright, breakbeat poet, director, educator, and organizer. His poetry collections include Can I Kick It? and These Are The Breaks. He is the author of over sixty original plays ranging from his Hip Hop inspired breakbeat play series to historical dramas to works for young audiences. Goodwin has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry, Sesame Street, NPR, BBC Radio, and the Discovery Channel. He is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow.

Rosalind Guy is a high school English teacher. She recently received an MFA from the University of Memphis. Her poems and essays have appeared or will appear in African Voices,  Juke Joint, Glass Poetry Journal: Poets Resist, and Georgia Review.

Andrew Hemmert is the author of Sawgrass Sky (Texas Review Press, 2021). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. He won the 2018 River Styx International Poetry Contest. Hemmert earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Driftwood Press.

W.J. Herbert’s debut poetry collection, Dear Specimen, was selected by Kwame Dawes as a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series and published by Beacon Press (2021). Selected by Natasha Trethewey for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2017, her poems also appear in The Atlantic, Boulevard, Hudson Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Herbert lives in Kingston, New York, and Portland, Maine.

Jill McDonough is the author of Here All Night; Reaper; Where You Live; Oh, James!; andHabeas Corpus. The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught  incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and The Best American Poetry. McDonough teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and started a program offering college reading and writing in two Boston jails.

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Holy Moly Carry Me, which was the winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Meitner is currently a professor of English at Virginia Tech. Her newest book, Useful Junk, is due out from BOA Editions in April 2022.

Jenny Molberg is the author of Marvels of the Invisible and Refusal. Her third collection is expected to appear in 2023. She is the recipient of a 2019-2020 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the C.D. Wright conference. Molberg's work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Missouri Review, and other publications.

Jason Myers is a writer, editor, and transitional deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. He received an MFA from NYU and a Master of Divinity from Emory University, where he was a Forum for Theological Exploration Fellow. Myers is the executive director of EcoTheo Collective and editor-in-chief of EcoTheo Review. He lives with his wife and son in Houston.

Sebastián Hasani Páramo is a CantoMundo Fellow. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Crazyhorse, Salamander, TriQuarterly, The Missouri Review, and Blackbird, among others. He is the founding editor of THE BOILER and poetry editor for Deep Vellum and has received scholarships and awards from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. Páramo holds a PhD in English and creative writing at the University of North Texas and will be the 2021 Jesse H. Jones Fellow through the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program, sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Alexa Patrick is a singer and poet from Connecticut. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, Obsidian, and The Watering Hole. Patrick was the 2019 head coach of the D.C. Youth Slam Team, and has held teaching positions through Split This Rock, The University of the District of Columbia, and the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University. You may find her work in publications including The Quarry, ArLiJo, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Patrick's debut collection, Remedies for Disappearing, will be published by Haymarket Books in 2023. 

Lucas Daniel Peters is a poet from rural Indiana. He received his MFA in poetry from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Five Points, The Greensboro Review, The Laurel Review, Midwest Review, The Missouri Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Peters is a grant recipient through United State Artists.

Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. She has had the opportunity to participate in a number of prestigious writing residencies, including those of the Cove Park Scottish Arts Council, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and the Villa Sträuli in Zurich. Polonskaya has published translations in many journals, including The American Poetry Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and Kenyon Review.

A. Prevett is the author of the chapbook Still, No Grace (Madhouse Press, 2021). Their work appears in such journals as Sixth Finch, West Branch, DIAGRAM, and others. They are pursuing an MFA from Georgia State University, where they currently serve as editor of New South.

Brian Tierney is the author of Rise and Float, winner of the 2020-21 Jake Adam York Prize (Milkweed, forthcoming February 2022). His poetry and prose have appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, AGNI, New England Review, Image Journal, and others. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Raised in Philadelphia, Tierney lives in Oakland, California, where he teaches poetry at The Writing Salon.

Judith Vollmer is the author of six books of poetry, including The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin Press Four Lakes Prize, spring 2022). Her poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared or are about to in Barrow Street, Plume, Poetry International, The Women’s Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire, and many other journals and anthologies. Vollmer teaches privately and lives in Pittsburgh’s Nine Mile Run Watershed.

Chelsea Wagenaar is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently The Spinning Place, winner of the 2018 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her first collection, Mercy Spurs the Bone, was selected by Philip Levine to win the 2013 Philip Levine Prize. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of North Texas, and currently teaches in North Carolina. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review and The Massachusetts Review.

Hannah V Warren is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia where she studies poetry and speculative narratives. She is the author of two chapbooks: [re]construction of the necromancer from Sundress Publications and Southern Gothic Corpse Machine from Carrion Bloom Books (forthcoming 2022). Her works have appeared in Gulf Coast, Passages North, and Fairy Tale Review, among others.

John Sibley Williams is the author of six collections, including The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory(Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). Williams is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include The Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.

Tyler Barton's debut full-length book of fiction, Eternal Night at the Nature Museum, was published by Sarabande Books (2021). He’s the author of The Quiet Part Loud, winner of the Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest from Split Lip Press. His short fiction has been published widely in journals and magazines such as Kenyon Review, Subtropics, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and others.

Tom Franklin is the The New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. Franklin teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Lindsay Hunter is the author of the story collections Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s and the novels Ugly Girls and Eat Only When You're Hungry, a finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Chicago with her husband, sons, and dogs.

Anu Kandikuppa’s essays, flash fiction, and short stories have appeared or will appear in Colorado Review, Epiphany, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salt Hill, The Cincinnati Review, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and other journals. She worked as an economics consultant in a former life and lives in Boston.

Tessa Yang's fiction has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Foglifter, Joyland, and elsewhere. She lives in upstate New York where she is an assistant professor of English at Hartwick College. Her debut story collection, The Runaway Restaurant, is forthcoming from 7.13 Books in 2022. Follow her on Twitter: @ThePtessadactyl.

Bridget A. Lyons is a writer and editor living in Santa Cruz, California. She holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has had previous lives as a middle school teacher, wilderness guide, yoga instructor, energy bar maker, and graphic designer. Her essay “Owlgazing” was named a The Best American Essays 2019 Notable Essay. Lyons's work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Catamaran, Atticus Review, Hawk and Handsaw, and other journals.

Philip Metres has written numerous books, including Shrapnel Maps, Sand Opera, and The Sound of Listening. Awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations, and three Arab American Book Awards, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University, and core faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program. He hopes you're taking care of your beloved self today and every day.

Kathryn Nuernberger’s essay collections are The Witch of Eye (Sarabande, 2021) and Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her poetry collections include RUE and The End of Pink. A recipient of fellowships from the NEA, American Antiquarian Society, Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life, and H. J. Andrews Research Forest, Nuernberger teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota.