Bella’s Bartok is a Balkan-inspired freak-folk band out of Northampton, Massachusetts. Members include Sean Klaiber, Jesse Putnam, Chris Kerrigan, Amory Drennan, Sean VanDeusen, Tyler Knapp and Asher Putnam.

Carousel is an electric-pop duo based in Los Angeles, California. The group’s leading men, Jackson Phillips and Kevin Friedman, originally hail respectively from San Francisco, CA and Cleveland, OH and met while attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. They have toured with LIGHTS, Neon Trees, and Capital Cities.

Gary Carter calls his recent novel, Eliot’s Tale, a reverse-coming-of-age-looking-toward-the-dirt-nap road trip and love story. His short fiction and poetry have appeared recently in such eclectic journals as Real South Magazine, Dead Mule, Steel Toe Review, Burnt Bridge, Dew on the Kudzu, Fried Chicken & Coffee, Muscadine Lines and Read Short Fiction. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, he writes on a range of topics for magazines and online pubs, and on his blog, Eliot’s Tales 4 Gen B.

Boona Daroom is 29 and lives in Brooklyn.

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach came to the United States as a Jewish refugee in 1993, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is currently a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature Ph.D. program. Julia’s awards include Lilith Magazine’s 2013 Charlotte A. Newberger Poetry Prize as well as honorable mentions in Spoon River Poetry Review’s 2010 Editors Prize andConsequence Magazine’s 2013 Poetry Prize. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Guernica, Mason’s Road, and Diverse Voices Quarterly, among other journals. She is the Poetry Editor of Construction Magazine.

Freya Gibbon lives and teaches in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where she’s also finishing an MFA in writing. Other recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in MAKE: A Literary Magazine and The Florida Review.

Taylor Emrey Glascock graduated with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri in 2011. While in school she worked as an on set photographer for feature films “V/H/S” and “You’re Next,” both of which received wide theatrical release and international distribution. After graduation, she interned at The Dallas Morning News, The Columbus Dispatch and the Peoria Journal Star. She is the creator of the sites Sh*t Photojournalists Like and SunTimes/DarkTimes, and has been featured on Wired, 10,000 Words, and the Huffington Post about her blogs and the state of photojournalism. Her work has been published by the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The cover image was originally published in the Dallas Morning News.

Samiah Haque grew up in Saudi Arabia and is currently an MFA student at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where she edits for The Michigan Quarterly Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming from Paper Darts, Santa Clara Review, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Kundiman.

Edward Helfers holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. His work has appeared in Web Conjunctions, Gigantic, JERRY Magazine, and theatlantic.com. He currently teaches writing at George Washington University and lives with his wife and two children in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Meg Johnson is the author of the full length poetry collection, Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in Hobart, Midwestern Gothic, The Puritan, Slipstream Magazine, Word Riot, and others. Meg started dancing at a young age and worked professionally in the performing arts for many years. She currently lives in Akron, Ohio and is the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal. Her website is megjohnson.org and she blogs at megjohnsonmegjohnson.blogspot.com

Kristen Kuczenski is grateful to reside in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she’s pursuing graduate coursework in poetry and women’s studies at The University of Alabama. She just received a scholarship to The Glen Workshop this June and is currently counting the days! To reach her, email kristenjansenkuczenski@gmail.com.

Nate Liederbach is the author of the collections Doing a Bit of Bleeding, Negative Spaces, and the forthcoming Tongues of Men and of Angels: Nonfictions Ataxia. Recent work has appeared, or is slated to appear, in Bayou, Denver Quarterly, Fugue, Mid-American Review, Third Coast, and other journals. He lives in Eugene, OR.

Alex McElroy‘s fiction appears or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Tin House Flash Fridays, Booth, Word Riot, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Arizona, where he serves as the International Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Jennifer Nicely lives and works on the farm she grew up on, Riverplains, which sits in a lovely crook of the Holston River in Jefferson County, TN. After years of pursuing “success” as a singer-songwriter in Nashville, five years ago she landed back in East Tennessee — and is so grateful she did. Her upcoming album, tentatively titled “Creatures”, will be greeting the world sometime late Spring 2014.

Esteban Rodríguez holds an MFA from the University of Texas Pan-American, and works as an elementary reading and writing tutor in the Rio Grande Valley, promoting both English and Spanish literacy. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, storySouth, The Country Dog Review, and Huizache. He lives in Weslaco, Texas.

Sarah Rutter is a recent graduate of Dartmouth College, where she studied creative writing. She currently lives in Vermont, and plans to pursue a career in architecture.

Matthew Wimberley is a Starworks Fellow and MFA candidate at New York University. A finalist for the 2012 Narrative 30 Below Contest, and the 2013 Organic Weapon Arts David Blair Memorial Chapbook Prize, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Rattle, Orion, The Greensboro Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Paris-American, and elsewhere. Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his two dogs and spent March and April of 2012 driving across the country. A Localist poet, he currently resides in Brooklyn.