Pritha Bhattacharyya is a Bengali-American writer who received her B.A. from Cornell University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Apogee Journal, RHINO Poetry, The Blueshift Journal, Litro Online, plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing, and elsewhere. She currently serves as a prose reader for The Adroit Journal.

Susan Frith lives in Orlando, FL, with her husband, two daughters, and (non-bicycling) dog. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Moon City Review, New Madrid, The Cossack Review, Sycamore Review, Phoebe, and other publications. Recently, she’s completed a novel set in 19th-century Philadelphia.

Kelsey Gray is a newly self-identified poet and writer originally from the plains of Colorado who now lives in Portland, Oregon. With a lifelong background in the visual arts and a B.A. from Lewis and Clark College where she studied oil painting, Kelsey’s practice has recently taken a turn from the concretely tangible, to the more liminal. In the past year, Kelsey has been preoccupied with time-based making, and spent six months embroidering a total of 450 emptied teabags. Initially born out of a frustration at the lack of a concrete studio space, the project quickly became a much broader rumination on messes, the precarity of domestic debris, and ultimately, corporeal and cerebral fragilities as mooring constants of the embodied experience. These themes resurface broadly within her work. The teabags were later displayed aerially in a solo exhibition at MilePost 5 in Portland, alongside a self-made chapbook on sickness, wellness, and the question of one’s agency therein. Kelsey’s written work has previously appeared in Maudlin House, Synergia Journal of Gender Thought and Expression, and self-published chapbooks.

Tara E. Jay is a poet and essayist from Indiana, currently living in Michigan with a Miniature Schnauzer named Phoebe. In 2017, Tara received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is the editorial director of The Index, an imprint of Wolverine Press, a University of Michigan letterpress studio.

Joshua Lee Martin, a PhD student in creative writing at Georgia State University, has been published or has work forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Louisiana Literature, Appalachian Heritage, The Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. He recently was a finalist in the 2016 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition and the 2016 Coal Hill Review Contest, and his chapbook, ‘Passing Through Meat Camp’, was a finalist in the 2015 Jacar Press Chapbook Competition. He currently teaches composition at Georgia State University.

Josh Myers is from Heidelberg, Germany. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. He currently edits Toad.

Noor Naga is an Alexandrian writer who was born in Philly, raised in Dubai, and studied in Toronto. Her work is as geographically promiscuous as she is and has been published or is forthcoming in The Puritan, The Offing, This is Worldtown, The Sultan’s Seal, and more. She is the 2017 Bronwen Wallace Award Winner, and also a recipient of The Canada Graduate Master’s Scholarship, The Mary Coyne Rowell Jackman Graduate Scholarship and The Avie Bennett Emerging Writers Scholarship from the University of Toronto where she received her MA in Creative Writing. This particular excerpt is from her unpublished novel, Wing of Humility, which is set in Dubai.

Debra Nystrom is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Night Sky Frequencies and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow, 2016). Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including AGNI, Kenyon Review, and the New Yorker. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Virginia.

Kelcey Parker Ervick is the author of The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová (Rose Metal Press), a hybrid work of biography, memoir, and visual art. Her previous books include Liliane’s Balcony: A Novella of Fallingwater (Rose Metal Press) and the story collection, For Sale By Owner (Kore Press). Her stories, essays, and mixed-media narratives have appeared in Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Passages North, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. A recipient of grants from the Indiana Arts Commission and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, she directs the creative writing program at Indiana University South Bend.

Joanna Pearson‘s short stories have recently appeared (or are forthcoming) in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Carve, Copper Nickel, The Hopkins Review, Joyland, The Mississippi Review, as well as others, and been noted a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2015 and anthologized in Best of the Net 2016. She is also the author of a book of poetry, Oldest Mortal Myth (Story Line Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Donald Justice Prize and the 2014 Towson University Prize for Literature, and a young adult novel, The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011).

David Salner has worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, bus driver, cab driver, longshoreman, teacher, baseball usher, and librarian. He was a telephone solicitor for 24 hours. His writing appears in recent issues of Threepenny Review, Salmagundi, River Styx, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Nashville Review, and many other magazines. He is the author of Blue Morning Light (2016, Pond Road Press), which features poems on the paintings of American artist George Bellows.  

Avia Tadmor is a writer and translator completing her MFA at Columbia University, where she also teaches for the Undergraduate Writing Program. Her work appeared or is forthcoming in Asymptote, Mantis, Apogee, Crab Orchard Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the 2016 Indiana Review Poetry Prize.

Talin Tahajian grew up near Boston. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Indiana Review, Best New Poets 2014 & 2016, Salt Hill Journal, Passages North, Columbia Poetry Review, and Washington Square Review. She edits poetry for Big Lucks & the Adroit Journal, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan.

Brandon Thurman is a behavior analyst and poet living in Fayetteville, Arkansas with his husband and son. His poetry can be found or is forthcoming in PANK, Ninth Letter, Zone 3, Glass, DIALOGIST, and others.

Jordan Tiberio creates photography captivates by recasting mundane, everyday objects into delightful centerpieces. To achieve this desired effect, Jordan shoots in unconventional ways. Often she shoots with a scarf covering her lens, or photographing reflections– which can be seen in her series Liquid Mirrors. Her recurrent use of layering ensures that the photographic process goes beyond just taking the first exposure.

She received her BFA in photography from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2015, but prior to that her work had already been the recipient of numerous awards and has appeared in several magazines.

Clients include Steve Madden, Nanette Lepore, Teen Vogue, Samsung Mobile USA, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Brian Tierney’s work has appeared in, or is forthcoming in: New England Review, AGNI, Kenyon Review, FIELD, Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, The Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, and others. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, and a graduate of the Bennington College MFA Writing Seminars, he was named among Narrative Magazine’s “30 Below 30” emerging writers in 2013. His first manuscript, Waking In The Year Of The Boar, has been a finalist for The National Poetry Series and The Levis Prize from Four Way Books. He lives in Oakland, CA, and teaches poetry at The Writing Salon.

Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad was born and raised in New York. Her poetry has appeared in The Missing Slate, Passages North, HEArt Journal Online, Pinch Journal, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the poetry editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly, and a Best of the Net, Pushchart Prize, and Best New Poets nominee. She currently lives in New York where she practices matrimonial law.

Melissa Wiley is the author of Antlers in Space and Other Common Phenomena (Split Lip Press). Her creative nonfiction has appeared most recently in places like The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Phoebe, Waxwing, Vol.1 Brooklyn, The Offing, Juked, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Drunken Boat, PANK, and Queen Mob’s Tea House. She lives in Chicago.

Meg Wolitzer is the author of ten novels, including The Wife (2003) and The Interestings (2010). Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she currently teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.

Annie Woodford is originally from Henry County, Virginia. She studied poetry at Hollins College and is now a teacher at Virginia Western Community College. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Texas Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She was a finalist in the 2016 Unicorn Press First Book Contest. In 2017, she was awarded the Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets and a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Poetry for the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her first book of poetry is forthcoming from Groundhog Poetry Press.