Emily Alexander is a writer, a clumsy waitress, and an older sister. Her work has been featured in Vending Machine Press, NAILED Magazine, and Radar Poetry, and she was recently awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize at the University of Idaho.

Chelsea Catherine has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tampa. She is a Sterling Watson fellow, a PEN Short Story Prize nominee, and winner of the 2016 Raymond Carver Short Story award. She has been writing since she was eight years old.

Laura Cesarco Eglin is the author of three collections of poetry, Los brazos del saguaro (Yaugurú, 2015), Sastrería (Yaugurú, 2011), and Llamar al agua por su nombre (Mouthfeel Press, 2010). A bilingual edition of her first book translated by Scott Spanbauer was published as Calling Water by Its Name (Mouthfeel Press, 2016). A selection of poems from Sastrería was translated collaboratively into English with Teresa Williams, and subsequently published as the chapbook Tailor Shop: Threads (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Cesarco Eglin also published the chapbook Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (Lunamopolis, The Lune series, 2015). Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including Modern Poetry in Translation, MiPOesias, Eleven Eleven, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Timber, Pretty Owl Poetry, Drunken Boat, Pilgrimage, Arsenic Lobster; Periódico de Poesía, Metrópolis, and more. Her poems are also featured in the Uruguayan women’s section of Palabras Errantes, Plusamérica: Latin American Literature in Translation. Cesarco Eglin’s poetry appears in América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (University of New Mexico Press, 2016). Cesarco Eglin’s work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the co-founder and publisher of Veliz Books.

Jon Chopan teaches creative writing at Eckerd College. He received his MFA from The Ohio State University. His first book, Pulled from the River, was published by Black Lawrence Press (2012). His work has been published or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, The Southampton Review, Epiphany, Hotel Amerika, Hobart, and elsewhere.

Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays.  He has edited over a dozen anthologies.  His most recent collection, City of Bones: A Testament (Northwestern University Press, 2017) appears along with Speak from Here to There (Peepal Tree Press, 2016), a co-written collection of verse with Australian poet John Kinsella, and A Bloom of Stones (Peepal Tree Press, 2016), a tri-lingual anthology of Haitian Poetry written after the earthquake, which he edited. A Spanish-language collection of his poems, titled Vuelo (Valaparaiso Ediciones), appeared in Mexico in 2016.  He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska and the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival.

Elizabeth Forsythe is a poet living and writing in Chicago, where she recently earned her MFA in poetry from Columbia College. While at Columbia, she served as an editor for Columbia Poetry Review. At twenty-six years old, she is in the middle of a quarter-life crisis, which she combats by traveling frequently, using money she doesn’t have. The recipient of the 2016 Jane Lumley Prize, her work can be found at After the Pause, Arsenic Lobster, By&By Poetry, Hermeneutic Chaos, Tinderbox Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Vincent Hao is an aspiring writer who attends the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas. He enjoys reading poetry and writes in a variety of different styles in his spare time. His work is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal and ANOMALY Magazine . His favorite writers are Thomas Pynchon, Ocean Vuong, and Carolyn Forché, and his favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, due to its beauty and complexity. The most amazing image he as seen is the vantage down his sidewalk at night, when the sky is dark and bathed in insect songs, and the street lamps carry small patches of the world beneath their ambient frames.

Kate Lebo is the author of Pie School (Sasquatch Books) and A Commonplace Book of Pie (Chin Music Press). Her essays and poems have appeared in Best American Essays, Best New Poets, New England Review, Willow Springs, and Gastronomica, among other places. In 2017, Sasquatch Books will release Pie & Whiskey, an anthology co-edited with Sam Ligon and based on their popular Pie & Whiskey reading series. She lives in Spokane, Washington, which means she’s currently represented in the House by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, often described as the most powerful Republican woman in Congress.

Lois Ruskai Melina’s work has been published in two anthologies of Idaho writers: Borne on Air (Eastern Washington Press) and Forged in Fire (University of Oklahoma Press), and has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Carolina Quarterly, 2016 Best of the Net Anthology, Crack the Spine, and Lunch Ticket, among others. Her essays have been long-listed or finalists for the New Letters Prize for Nonfiction, the Torch Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and the Dead Bison Editors’ Prize in Nonfiction. She is the author of three books on adoption, including Raising Adopted Children (HarperCollins). She lived in Moscow, Idaho for almost 30 years before moving to her current home in Portland, Oregon.

W. Scott Olsen lives in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he teaches writing at Concordia College and edits the literary magazine Ascent. The author of eleven nonfiction travel/adventure books and co-editor of three anthologies, his most recent book is A Moment with Strangers: Photographs and Essays at Home and Abroad (North Dakota State University Press, 2016). His work appears widely in literary magazines as well as commercial magazines focused on either flying or photography.

Mary Quade is the author of the poetry collections Guide to Native Beasts (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) and Local Extinctions (Gold Wake Press). Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Broad Street, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, The Florida Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, West Branch, Confrontation, Grist, and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment and are included in two anthologies released in 2016: From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines (Michigan State University Press) and Writing Essays: Twenty Essays and Interviews with Authors (SUNY). Her essay “Hatch” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013.

Artress Bethany White is the author of the collection of poems Fast Fat Girls in Pink Hot Pants (2012). She has received the Mary Hambidge Distinguished Fellowship from the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts for her nonfiction and The Mona Van Duyn Scholarship in poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.  New nonfiction is forthcoming in The Hopkins Review and the anthology Seeking Home: Marginalization and Representation in Appalachian Letters and Song (University of Tennessee Press, 2017). Recent poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, The New Guard, Harvard Review, and Ecotone. She is associate professor of English at Carson-Newman University and resides in Knoxville, TN.

Rita Wong currently lives on unceded Coast Salish territory also known as Vancouver, British Columbia, and teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design; she grew up on Treaty 7 territory in Calgary, Alberta. She is the author of three books of poetry, monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007) and most recently, undercurrent; co-author of two books, perpetual (with Cindy Mochizuki, Nightwood Editions, 2015) and sybil unrest (with Larissa Lai, Linebooks, 2008); and editor, with Dorothy Christian, of Downstream: Reimagining Water (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016). She’s won several awards, including the Dorothy Livesay Prize for forage.

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