Contributors to Issue IX
Neil Anderson
Neil Anderson is a teacher and translator living in Lubbock, Texas. His translations of Galician poetry have appeared in journals such as Asymptote, The Bitter Oleander, Pleiades, Absinthe, M-Dash, and Salamander.
Genevieve Arlie
Genevieve Arlie is a poet, editor, and translator from California currently based in the Midwest. She holds literature degrees from Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Iowa, where she was an Arts Fellow in translation. She was a finalist in poetry for the 2016 Disquiet Literary Prize. Look for her other translations of Dénes Krusovszky in The Brooklyn Quarterly and the forthcoming harlequin creature (where “The second” will appear in print).
Rosebud Ben-Oni
Photo: Brian LeeBorn to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a CantoMundo Fellow. She was a Rackham Merit Fellow at the University of Michigan, and a Horace Goldsmith Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013), a contributor to The Conversant, and an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, and The Volta, among others. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and at 7TrainLove.org.
Anna Boshka
Anna Boshka was born and raised in Northwest Montana and now lives in Hope, Idaho, with her husband and two wild daughters. She gleans material for her writing from land and people of the Western Rockies and from her students at the therapeutic boarding school where she teaches English Literature.
Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), a French writer, artist and film director, was one of the most influential creative figures in the Parisian avant-garde between the world wars. He wrote poetry, novels, memoirs, plays, and operas; he was a prolific illustrator, designer, painter, and sculptor. In the second half of his fifty-year career he produced and directed ground-breaking surrealist films, most notably “Blood of a Poet” (1930), “Beauty and the Beast” (1946) and “Orpheus” (1949). His circle of friends and associates, with whom he often collaborated, made up a who’s who of European artistic life, including Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Andre Gide, Coco Chanel and Colette. He was made a member of the Académie française and the Royal Academy of Belgium, won numerous awards, and was made president of the Cannes Film festival. He died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret after hearing the news of the death of his friend Edith Piaf.
Weston Cutter
Weston Cutter is from Minnesota and is the author of You’d Be a Stranger, Too, a book of stories, and a whole bunch of poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is Regulation Ghost, available online through Banango Editions. He lives and teaches in Ft. Wayne, IN.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated as a Jewish refugee from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a PhD student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature and Literary Theory program. Her research focuses on the lyric rendering of trauma in contemporary American poetry related to the Holocaust. Her poetry has appeared in Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Narrative Magazine, among others. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and TENT Writers’ Conferences, as well as the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and she won the 2016, 2015, and 2014 William Carlos Williams Prizes from the Academy of American Poets. Julia is the author of The Bear Who Ate the Stars, winner of Split Lip Magazine’s 2014 Uppercut Chapbook Award. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine. Visit her wordpress to reach her or read her failed blogging attempts.
Flávio de Araújo
Photo: Laura AraújoFlávio de Araújo (b. 1975) is a contemporary poet from Paraty, Brazil, who comes from a family of caiçara fishermen. His debut poetry collection, Zangareio, was published in conjunction with the 2008 Paraty International Literary Festival. Araújo has also been a featured reader at the International Literary Festival of Porto de Galinhas-Pernambuco, the International Literature Festival in Havana, Cuba, and the Salvador Díaz Mirón Iberoamericano Festival of Poetry in Las Choapas, Mexico.
Carina del Valle Schorske
Carina del Valle Schorske is a poet, essayist, and translator based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Prelude, The Point, Prodigal, and The Awl. She is a CantoMundo Fellow, the MacDowell Colony's 2013-2014 Isabella Gardner Fellow in poetry, and a PhD student at Columbia University where she studies psychoanalysis and race. Find her @fluentmundo on Twitter, @psycheandstupid on Instagram, or in her one true home on Facebook.
Karen Wild Díaz
Karen Wild Díaz was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She studied philosophy at the University of Paris 8-Vincennes-Saint Denis, and is now an assistant professor at the University of the Republic. Her first book in English, Anti-Ferule was originally published as Anti-Férula (2013, Buenos Aires: Editorial Itinerante; 2014, Niñobúho cartonera). Her poems have appeared in the Argentine anthology Hijas de diablo, Hijas de santo (2014: Niñobúho cartonera) and in English translation in Blue Lyra Review, Copper Nickel, and América Invertida: An Anthology of Younger Uruguayan Poets. Karen practices contemporary dance and incorporates performance into her poetry presentations, and she blogs at amapurea.blogspot.com.
John Fry
Originally from South Texas, John Fry has published poems in West Branch, Colorado Review, Blackbird, Tupelo Quarterly, and Devil’s Lake, among others. He is the author of the chapbook silt will swirl (NewBorder, 2012). A graduate of Texas State University’s MFA program, he edits poetry for Newfound Journal and is a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies Medieval English literature.
Arna Bontemps Hemenway
Arna Bontemps Hemenway is the author of Elegy on Kinderklavier (Sarabande Books), winner of the 2015 PEN/Hemingway Award, and finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. His short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Best American Short Stories 2015, A Public Space, Ecotone, Five Chapters, and The Missouri Review, among other venues. He’s been the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Truman Capote Literary Trust. He holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing at Baylor University.
Caitlin Horrocks
Caitlin Horrocks is author of the story collection This Is Not Your City, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Tin House, One Story, and other journals and anthologies. Her awards include the Plimpton Prize and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony. She is the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review and teaches at Grand Valley State University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is at work on a novel and a second story collection, both forthcoming from Little, Brown.
Brionne Janae
Brionne Janae is a California native, teaching artist, and poet living in Boston. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in jubilat, Apogee Journal, Plume, and Bayou Magazine, among others. Brionne received her MFA from Emerson College and is a Cave Canem Fellow.
Charles Jensen
Charles Jensen is the author of Breakup/Breakdwn (forthcoming in January 2017 from Five Oaks Press) and The First Risk, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His previous chapbooks include The Nanopedia Quick Reference Pocket Lexicon of Contemporary American Culture (MiPOEASIAS Chapbook Series); Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award; and The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon. A past recipient of an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, his poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bloom, Field, The Journal, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. He currently works as the managing editor at the Colburn School. He lives in Los Angeles.
King James and the Special Men
King James and the Special Men play every Monday night at Sidney’s Saloon, 1200 St. Bernard Avenue, in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. They start at 10:30ish. The band’s website can be found here.
Dénes Krusovszky
Dénes Krusovszky is a Hungarian poet, fiction writer, and critic. He studied comparative literature and aesthetics at the ELTE University of Budapest and has published seven books: the essay collection Kíméletlen szentimentalizmus [Harsh sentimentalism] (2014), the short-story collection A fiúk országa [The boys’ republic] (2014), and the poetry collections Az összes nevem [All my names] (2006), Elromlani milyen [How it feels to go wrong] (2009), A felesleges part [Superfluous shore] (2011), Mindenhol ott vagyok [I’m everywhere] (2013), and Elégiazaj [Elegynoise] (2015). He divides his time between Budapest and Vienna.
Adriana Lisboa
Photo: Julie HarrisAdriana Lisboa's many honors include the José Saramago Award, the Japan Foundation Fellowship, a fellowship from the Brazilian National Library, and the Newcomer of the Year Award from the Brazilian section of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People). She has published ten books, including novels, children's books, and a collection of short stories and prose poetry. Lisboa holds a BA in Music from Rio de Janeiro Federal State University (UniRio), an MA in Brazilian Literature, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Rio de Janeiro State University (Uerj). Born in Rio de Janeiro, she now lives in Colorado.
Kenji C. Liu
Photo: Margarita CorporanKenji C. Liu is author of Map of an Onion, national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize. His poetry is in, among other places, American Poetry Review, Action Yes!, Split This Rock’s poem of the week series, four anthologies, and the chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, VONA/Voices, Djerassi, and the Community of Writers.
Kathleen McGookey
Kathleen McGookey’s most recent book is Stay (Press 53). Her book At the Zoo is forthcoming from White Pine Press in spring 2017. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Quarterly West. She has received grants from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.
Claire McQuerry
Claire McQuerry’s collection Lacemakers won the Crab Orchard First Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Fugue, American Literary Review, and other journals. She teaches at Whitworth University.
Oriana Méndez
Oriana Méndez’s first contact with poetry came through the political-cultural group Redes Escarlata, where she collaborated on the collective project Xuro que nunca volverei pasar fame [I Swear I’ll Never be Hungry Again] (2003). Her books include Derradeiras conversas co capitán Kraft [Last Conversations with Capitan Kraft] (2007), Cero [Zero] (2011), and O que precede a caída é branco [White Comes before the Fall], for which she was awarded the XVII Concello de Carral Poetry Prize. Her work has also appeared in Spanish translation in journals such as Nayagua, and has been anthologized in Anthology of Galician Literature (1981-2011) and Novas de poesía: 17 poetas. Méndez’s committment to collective cultural intervention has led her to work with groups such as the now-defunct Bou Eva cultural center (Vigo) and the blog Asalto (the literary wing of the Fundación Robo), groups that question received notions of authorship and literature-as-lyric. She believes that we urgently need to flip the pyramid. Together.
Tiffany Midge
Tiffany Midge is the recipient of the Kenyon Review’s Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry for The Woman Who Married a Bear (University of New Mexico Press), and the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Prize for Outlaws, Renegades and Saints; Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed (Greenfield Review Press). Three of her essays were selected by Roxane Gay for publication in The Toast, Butter blog; her fiction — stories from a work in progress called Sex, Lies, and Frybread: A Dramedy, about contemporary, urban Native life — have also appeared in The Raven Chronicles, receiving a Pushcart nomination; Hinchas de Poesía; and forthcoming in Yellow Medicine Review. Her poetry has been published in The Rumpus, Okey-Pankey, and Electric Literature. Tiffany is a humor and satire contributor for Indian Country Today Media Network, Sovereign Bodies, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and is enrolled with The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She holds an MFA from the University of Idaho, and is Moscow, Idaho’s, inaugural Poet Laureate. One day she hopes to be the distinguished writer in residence in the Seattle Space Needle, and to write the Great American (Indian) Novel.
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren
Photo: Caio MeiraRachel Morgenstern-Clarren is a poet, editor, and Portuguese-English translator whose honors include a Hopwood Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Page Davidson Clayton Award for Emerging Poets, a Fulbright Fellowship, and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Joyland, Washington Square Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, and World Literature Today. Rachel holds an MFA in Poetry and Literary Translation from Columbia University. A Cleveland native, she is now based out of Montreal.
Jono Naito
Jono Naito shows up here and there, including Paper Darts, After the Pause, and Gravel. They study fiction in the MFA program at Syracuse University, where they also work with the journal Salt Hill. While they are online at jononaito.com, they also can be found digging through the snow looking for used telescopes.
Fernando Pérez
Fernando Pérez is from Los Angeles, CA. He attended Long Beach City College and received his BA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach, before moving to Phoenix, AZ, where he received an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University. Fernando is currently a tenure-track writing professor at Bellevue College in Washington State. His work has appeared in several journals, including Faultline, Hinchas de Poesía, Crab Orchard Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. His first collection of poems, At the Conquistador Hotel, is forthcoming from The University of New Mexico Press in the fall of 2017.
Vanesa Pérez-Sauquillo
Vanesa Pérez-Sauquillo is a Spanish poet, translator, and children’s book author based in Madrid. Climax Road — written in Farmington, Connecticut — has received Spain's Ojo Crítico Award (the National Spanish Radio and TV award) and the Accésit for the Adonáis Award, the oldest prize in Spanish poetry. It is her sixth book. Other poems from Climax Road have recently appeared in Carina del Valle Schorske's translations at Washington Square (“The Balance”) and Berfrois (“Valerie”).
Susan Blackwell Ramsey
Susan Blackwell Ramsey’s A Mind Like This won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Among other journals, her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, and New Ohio Review. She lives in Kalamazoo, which does exist.
Jessica Reed
Jessica Reed’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, 111O, North American Review, Conjunctions, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Spiral Orb, Kudzu House Quarterly, The Fourth River, and Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing. She has an MFA in Poetry and a BS in Physics, and lives in Indiana with her husband and seven buff chickens.
Ron Paul Salutsky
Ron Paul Salutsky, a native of Somerset, Kentucky, is the author of the poetry collection Romeo Bones (Steel Toe Books, 2013) and translator of Anti-Ferule (Toad Press, 2015, from the Spanish of Karen Wild Díaz). His poetry, translations, fiction, and scholarship have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Tupelo Quarterly, Narrative, Juked, John Clare Society Journal, Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Copper Nickel, Interim, and América Invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets. Ron lives in Ochlocknee, Georgia, and teaches at Southern Regional Technical College. Read more at salutsky.com.
Sejal Shah
Photo: Preston MerchantSejal Shah’s nonfiction has been nominated for Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize, and her essays and stories have appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, Kenyon Review Online, The Literary Review, and others. Her book manuscript, How to Make Your Mother Cry, was recently named a finalist for the 2016 The Journal / Ohio State University Press Non/Fiction Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships or artist residencies from Blue Mountain Center, Kundiman, the Millay Colony, and Ragdale, and writes essays twice monthly for the Kenyon Review blog. She lives and teaches in Rochester, NY. Visit her online at sejal-shah.com.
Glenn Shaheen
Glenn Shaheen’s newest collection of poetry is Energy Corridor (University of Pittsburgh, 2016).
Jerrel Singer
Jerrel Singer is Diné/Navajo. He is born for the Ashiihi (Salt People) Clan and Kinyaa’aanii (Towering Rock People) Clan. His Paternal Clan is Tl’aashchí’í (Red Bottom People) and his Maternal Clan is To dich’ii’nii (Bitterwater People). Jerrel is originally from Tuba City, part of a larger family unit that exudes contemporary Native American artistic talent. He is an abstract landscape artist whose work captures the daylight and nightscapes, the colors and shadows of the Navajo Reservation and of the Southwest, scenes that are recognizable as desert, sky, and clouds, but represented in an abstract fashion. In this piece, “The Sun Meets the Moon,” the sun rises and sets each day, and every so often he gets to see his friend the moon. When they see each other the dance and play, because they do not know when they will see each other again.
Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith is the author of The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press, 2015), winner of the Dorset Prize; Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award; and three chapbooks, the latest of which is Disasterology (Dream Horse Press, 2016). A 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Smith has also received fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and elsewhere. She is a freelance writer and editor, and a Contributing Editor to the Kenyon Review.
Mary-Sherman Willis
Mary-Sherman Willis’s books of poems include Caveboy (Artist’s Proof Editions 2012), a limited-edition art book and multi-touch iBook, and Graffiti Calculus (CW Books 2013), which was a semi-finalist for Tupelo Press’s First/Second Book Award and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her translation of Jean Cocteau’s book of prose poems, Appogiatures, will appear in Spring 2017 from The Word Works Press. Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in the New Republic, the Hudson Review, the Iowa Review, Gargoyle, Shenandoah, The Southern Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, and Archipelago.org, among other publications; in Ted Kooser’s column “American Life in Poetry”; and in several anthologies. She received a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and fellowships at the MacDowell Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and has taught creative writing at George Washington University.
