Lavonne J. Adams is the author of Through the Glorieta Pass (2007 Pearl Poetry Prize), and two chapbooks, In the Shadow of the Mountain and Everyday Still Life. She has published in more than fifty additional venues, includingMissouri Review, The Southern Humanities Review and Poet Lore, and been awarded residencies at the Harwood Museum of Art (University of New Mexico-Taos), The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Ann Beattie is the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing. She is the author of seven novels, including Chilly Scenes of Winter, Picturing Will, My Life Starring Dara Falcon, and seven short story collections, among them Secrets and Surprises, The Burning House, What Was Mine, Park City: New & Selected Stories, and Perfect Recall. Her many honors include the Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the PEN/Malamud award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Her novella, Walks with Men, has just been published by Scribner.
T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of twenty books of fiction, including, most recently, After the Plague (2001), Drop City (2003), The Inner Circle (2004), Tooth and Claw (2005), The Human Fly (2005), Talk Talk (2006), The Women (2009), Wild Child (2010) and When the Killing’s Done (2011). He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978. His work has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Farsi, Turkish, Albanian and Slovene. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney’s, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards. He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Mid-American Review, Annalemma, McSweeney’s (online, and others. Her first short story collection, Ayiiti, will be out this fall. She is the co-editor of PANK and you can find her online at www.roxanegay.com.
Katie Kingston is the author of three poetry collections: Unwritten Letters, El Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, and In My Dreams Neruda. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Great River Review, Green Mountains Review, Ellipsis, Hunger Mountain, Margie, and Nimrod. She is the recipient of the 2010 W.D Snodgrass Award for Poetic Endeavor and Excellence and has recently completed a fellowship residency at the Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain. Currently she lives and writes in Trinidad, an area known as the coal fields, located in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range.
Sara Lippmann received her MFA from the New School. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Scribblers on the Roof, Nanoism, All Things Girl, Fiction Circus, Slice, Carve, LIT, Fourth Genre and elsewhere; it is forthcoming from Fiction At Work and View from the Bed, View from the Bedside (an anthology from Wising Up Press). She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Clay Matthews’s first book, Superfecta, is available from Ghost Road Press, and his second, Runoff, was recently released from BlazeVOX Books. He likes to hear from folks. Drop him a line sometime: claydmatthews@sbcglobal.net
Dustin Michael is a doctoral student in English at the University of Missouri. His work has appeared in Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction.
Gary Percesepe’s short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, interviews, literary and film criticism, and articles in philosophy and religion have been published or are forthcoming in Salon, Mississippi Review, Antioch Review, Review of Metaphysics, Christian Scholar’s Review, New Ohio Review, Enterzone, Intertext, Luna Park, Istanbul Literary Review, Pank, elimae, Wigleaf, Prick of the Spindle, Metazen, Corium, Stymie Magazine, and other places. He is the author of four books in philosophy including Future(s) of Philosophy: The Marginal Thinking of Jacques Derrida. He just completed his second novel, Leaving Telluride. His first novel, an epistolary novel written with Susan Tepper, is called What May Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock and Dori G, and is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press in the fall of 2010.
Meg Pokrass is a writer and editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. Her stories and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines which include: Gargoyle, Gigantic, Pindeldyboz, Wigleaf, Elimae, Frigg, MonkeyBicycle, Juked, and Storyglossia. Meg’s story “Leaving Hope Ranch” from Storyglossia made Wigleaf ‘s Top Fifty 2009 List, and her story “Lost and Found” was selected by Storyglossia for Dzanc’s Short Story Month Anthology. Her prompt blog, and links with updates to new work, can be found at: http://www.megpokrass.com.
Sam Rasnake’s poetry has appeared or will appear in OCHO, Shampoo, Oranges & Sardines, BOXCAR Poetry Review, Ekleksographia, The Smoking Poet, and Naugatuck River Review, as well as the anthologies Best of the Web 2009 (Dzanc Books) and Deep River Apartments (The Private Press). He is the author of Necessary Motions (Sow’s Ear Press), Religions of the Blood (Pudding House), and Inside a Broken Clock, (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming in 2010). Rasnake edits Blue Fifth Review, an online journal of poetry and art.
David Schloss was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, studied Literature and Film, and received an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He is a Professor of English at Miami University, and lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Kay Sloan, a novelist, and his teenage daughter, Signe. He is the author of six books of poetry: Group Portrait from Hell (Carnegie Mellon U Press, 2009), Behind the Eyes (Dos Madres Press chapbook, 2005), Greatest Hits (Pudding Press, 2005), Sex Lives of the Poor and Obscure (Carnegie Mellon, 2001), Legends (Windmill Press, 1976) and The Beloved (Ashland Poetry Press, 1973).
Jeff Simpson received his MFA in poetry from Oklahoma State University. He has served as poetry editor for The Oklahoma Review and as an editorial assistant for The Cimarron Review. His first book, Vertical Hold, is forthcoming from Steel Toe Books. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, The Pinch, Harpur Palate, H_NGM_N, Lumina, Main Street Rag, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner.
Kay Sloan is the author of two novels, a poetry chapbook, and several books on American cultural history. She teaches literature at Miami University of Ohio.
Daniel Nathan Terry is the recipient of the 2007 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Award for his debut collection Capturing the Dead, which was published in 2008. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Weber, and The Café Review. He is enrolled in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he also teaches.
Vallie Lynn Watson received her PhD from the Center for Writers in 2009 and starting this fall will be teaching creative writing at Southeast Missouri State University. Lynn’s unpublished novella, A River So Long, was first runner up in the 2009 Miami University Press Novella Contest. Excerpts from the work appear or are forthcoming in Pindeldyboz, Product, Journal of Truth and Consequence, Women Writers, Sunsets and Silencers, Oracle, 971 Menu, Trailer Park Quarterly, Moon Milk Review, and Ghoti.