Christine Butterworth-McDermott teaches at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she acts as the poetry editor of REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters. Her creative work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, California Quarterly, Fourth River, Hiram Poetry Review, North Atlantic Review, RATTLE, and Sliver of Stone among others. She has authored a chapbook, Tales on Tales: Sestinas, and a full-length collection, Woods & Water, Wolves & Women.
Marci Calabretta hails from Ithaca, NY and is earning an MFA in poetry at Florida International University. Her work has appeared in Rainy Day, The Albion Review, and The MacGuffin. She is the managing editor for Print Oriented Bastards.
William Cullen, Jr., is a veteran and works at a non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. His writing has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Camroc Press Review, Christian Science Monitor, Pirene's Fountain, Red River Review, among others. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2010.
Originally from Sydney, Australia, Vicky Deger found her way to New York City in the mid 1980's where the city's seedy underbelly captured her. Between film production jobs, mohawks, and lovers, she scrutinized the innermost details of a gritty post-punk city life—so wildly juxtaposed to the bleached-blond beach life she'd grown up in. Her "life studies" transplanted her from New York to Brazil, to London, and finally Los Angeles where she raised two boys, works in the entertainment industry and is usually in the throws of planning her next adventure.
Ann Hostetler is the author of Empty Room with Light, and editor of A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry (Iowa, 2003). Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Washington Square, and elsewhere. She edits the Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing at www.mennonitewriting.org and teaches at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana.
Merrill Shane Jones is currently at work on his MFA in fiction at Colorado State University, a novel about the Old West, and a collection of stories set in Percival, Texas. His fiction appears or is forthcoming in the Bayou Review, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.
Based in Chicago, Susana S Martins holds a PhD in English from Boston College. She recently completed a novel about a nudist camp in Weimar Germany. Her latest stories are featured in Open to Interpretation: Water's Edge and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. Susana is currently working on her second novel.
John McKernan—who grew up in Nebraska—is now retired after teaching many years at Marshall University. He lives in Florida and West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. He has published poems in many places from The Atlantic Monthly to Zuzu's Petals. His latest book is Resurrection of the Dust.
Angela Rydell's stories and poems have appeared in The Sun, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Emerson Review, Crab Orchard Review, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. She is a recipient of Poets & Writers' Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College.
Nat Schmookler graduated from Harvard in 2011 and is busy carving out a life of writing. This is his first published story.
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is the author of Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster). Like her character, Miriam Kaminsky, Rochelle is a phone psychic who lives in Great Neck. She teaches writing at UCLA Extension and has published essays in The New York Times (Lives), and poetry in the Iowa Review, and more. Website: www.rochellejewelshapiro.com
David Thornbrugh is a Ring of Fire poet based in Seattle, Washington. In his poetry, he strives to make sense of existence, and to lessen some of the gloom he feels as the natural world fades further and further into the past and the future looks less and less viable. He finds life without humor not worth the effort, and the idea of being a poet in America pretty funny.
Mekiya Walters grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and currently studies creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. He is an aspiring author and poet, and has worked as a peer tutor in the Asheville-Buncombe Community College writing center and volunteered as a fiction editor for UNCW's literary magazine Atlantis. He also teaches Tae Kwon Do to children. His work has been accepted by Diverse Voices Quarterly and New Mirage Magazine, and one of his papers (Schism: Psychological Divides and the Death of Love in "We Didn't" and "The Hand") has been published online.
Casey Wiley's essays and stories have been published or are forthcoming in Barrellhouse, Salt Hill, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Pindledyboz, The Emerson Review, among others. He teaches English at Penn State University and is working on a book about everyday people (him) trying to be professionally funny. (He's not.)