Marcia Aldrich

Marcia Aldrich is the author of the free memoir Girl Rearing, published by W.W. Norton. She has been the editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. Companion to an Untold Story won the AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction. She is the editor of Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women published by The University of Georgia Press.

Tyler Barton

Tyler Barton is a cofounder of FEAR NO LIT, the literary organization behind the 2017 Submerging Writer Fellowship. He works as an educator in a children's museum, a volunteer workshop leader for elderly writers in an assisted living facility, and a podcast/radio host for Weekly Reader. He has work forthcoming in Passages North and recently published stories in Little Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, and No Tokens. Learn more at tsbarton.com or @goftyler.

Jeff Berglund

Jeff Berglund grew up in Fargo five blocks from the Red River. Today, he is the Director of Liberal Studies and a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, where he has worked since 1999. He is the author of articles on Native film, poetry, global Indigenous terminologies, and the pedagogy of American Indian literature. His books include Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2006), Sherman Alexie: a Collection of Critical Essays (co-editor, 2010) as well as Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop (co-editor, 2016). In addition to serving as the treasurer of the Association of Studies in American Indian Literature, Dr. Berglund is a member of the Australian-based Forum for Indigenous Research Excellence (FIRE) and The Working Group on Global Indigeneity.

Selva Casal

Born in 1930 in Montevideo, award-winning writer Selva Casal is the author of fifteen collections of poetry and one book-length essay on her father, Julio Casal, who was also a poet. A former penal lawyer, Casal writes from a deep concern for justice, denunciation of violence, and compassion for society’s most vulnerable. Her publication of No vivimos en vano in 1974, read as a denunciation of Uruguay’s then-dictatorial government, led to the loss of her position as Professor of Sociology at the University of the Republic. She resides with her husband in Montevideo, and she continues to write and paint each day. “Everything in life nourishes poetry,” she says. “Everything.”

Emari DiGiorgio

Emari DiGiorgio’s debut collection, The Things a Body Might Become, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in October 2017. She is the recipient of the 2016 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jake Adam York and has received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Rivendell Writers’ Colony. She teaches at Stockton University and is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet. She is an active member of the South Jersey Poets Collective, where she hosts World Above, a monthly reading series in Atlantic City, NJ; A Tour of Poetry, a monthly poetry workshop for older adults in Northfield, NJ; and a series of community writing workshops for underserved populations in the South Jersey area.

Sara Edinger

Sara Edinger became interested in German literature during her undergraduate days at Stanford. She subsequently obtained an M.A. (and ABD) in literature, but for practical reasons she spent most of her working life in information technology. In retirement she returned to the study of German and began making translations, mostly of poetry. She has published English versions of three poems by the German poet Elke Erb in Asymptote (April 2014) and another in Passager (this poem was also published on Poetry Daily). Her translations of two poems by Gisela Hemau appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of Field, and translations of three poems by Hemau will appear in the July 2017 issue of Asymptote.

Gëzim Hajdari

Born in Lushnje, Albania, in 1957, Gëzim Hajdari was persecuted by the communist regime and fled to Italy in 1992 where he has since resided. He is a prominent member of the “Scrittori Migranti” movement in Italy, a group of writers who intentionally eschew their first language, choosing instead to write in Italian. Hajdari has earned acclaim both in Italy and abroad for his poems, winning the prestigious Montale Prize among others. His work speaks to his experience as an exile, his deep-seated love and equally profound frustration with his native Albania, and the shifting, uncomfortable identity he inhabits.

Gisela Hemau

Gisela Hemau was born in 1938 and lives in Bonn. She studied German and English literature in Mainz, Würzburg, and Munich, and worked for a time as a reader of radio plays for West German Radio. Blinder Übergang (Blind Passage) is her sixth volume of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. A small group of English translations by Esther Elstun appeared in 2008, but Hemau is not well known to English readers. Elstun calls Hemau’s poetry “remarkable for its musicality and the boldness of its imagery.”

Lesley Jenike

Lesley Jenike’s most recent poetry collections are Holy Island (Gold Wake, 2014 and 2017) and Punctum :, winner of Kent State’s 2016 Wick Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Smartish Pace, Verse, Rhino, Rattle, Waxwing, Blackbird, and many other journals. She's been the recipient of awards from the Ohio Arts Council, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches literature and creative writing courses at the Columbus College of Art and Design and lives in Columbus with her husband and two small children.

Joseph O. Legaspi

Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of the poetry collections Threshold (Fall 2017) and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and two chapbooks, Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). His works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Best of the Net, Orion, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. He co-founded Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving Asian American writers.

Anat Levin

Anat Levin was born in Israel to a mother of Russian descent from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and a father from Kornitz, Belarus. Her debut book of poems, Slowly Revolving Anna (Achuzat Bayit, 2008), won the Ministry of Culture Award for Poetry. Her second collection of poetry, Mouth to Mouth (Keshev, 2013), won the 2012 ACUM prize from the Israeli Society for Authors and Musicians, The Rabinovich Tel Aviv Fund for Translation, and has been translated into English and German. Levin's first novel, The Archivist (Afik Books, 2015), was awarded the Ministry of Culture Award for Fiction in 2014 and an ACUM Aharon Ashman Award for Anonymously Submitted Fiction. She has received support from the Vermont Studio Center and has also been awarded the 2006 Poetry in the Streets Prize from the city of Tel Aviv. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Spanish, Russian, and Romanian. A graduate of the film and television department at Hunter College in New York, Levin worked for many years as a commercial writer for a law firm in Israel. She resides in Giv'atayim, Israel, with her husband, the poet Adi Assis.

Sebastian Matthews

Sebastian Matthews is the author of a memoir and three books of poetry, most recently Beginner's Guide to a head-on Collision, due out from Red Hen Press this November. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Georgia Review, The Sun, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He is currently working on a collection of personal essays and a book of prose poems. Matthews serves on the Vermont Studio Center trustee board and on the advisory board of Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters. His box-set “collage” novel, The Life & Times of American Crow, is available at americancrowgraphicnovel.com.

Yael Massen

Yael Massen is an MFA Candidate in Poetry and Associate Instructor of Composition and Creative Writing at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her work can be found within the pages and URLs of Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Third Coast, and The Journal. A recipient of the 2016 Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Award, she has also received support from The Yiddish Book Center, The National Society of Arts and Letters (Bloomington), Middlebury Summer Language School, and The Borns Jewish Studies Program. Yael has served as Nonfiction Editor and Associate Poetry Editor of Indiana Review. She volunteers as an On-Scene Advocate and a Legal Advocate at Middle Way House, providing support services to people who experience domestic and sexual violence in South-Central Indiana.

Larisa Miller

Larisa Miller was born in 1988 in Grodno, Belarus. She is a painter and poet. Her poems have been published in the journal Maayan. She is working on her first book and lives in Tel Aviv.

Diego Alfaro Palma

Diego Alfaro Palma (Limache, Chile, 1984) is a poet and editor. He is the author of two poetry books: Paseantes (2009, Ediciones del Temple) and Tordo, winner of the Santiago Literary Prize 2015 (Ediciones del Dock, Argentina, 2016 | Editorial Cuneta, Chile, 2014). He edited Homage to Ezra Pound (Universitaria, 2010) and the Collected Poems of Cecilia Casanova (Universidad de Valparaíso, 2013). His forthcoming work, Litoral Central, recently won publication in 2017 by the National Book Fund in his native Chile. He is the founder of publisher Limache250 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he currently resides.

Shelley Puhak

Shelley Puhak is the author of two books of poetry, the more recent of which, Guinevere in Baltimore (Waywiser, 2013), was awarded the Anthony Hecht Prize. Her poems have recently appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Missouri Review, North American Review, and Verse Daily; her essays have recently appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Iowa Review, and Salon. Puhak lives and works in Baltimore.

sam sax

sam sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of The National Poetry Series, selected by Terrance Hayes; and Bury It (Wesleyan, 2018). He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and the MacDowell Colony. He’s the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion, author of four chapbooks, and winner of the 2016 Iowa Review Award. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, BuzzFeed, Poetry, Tin House, other journals. He’s the poetry editor at BOAAT Press.

Jesse Sensibar

Jesse Sensibar is unafraid to die but terrified of dying alone. He loves big bore handguns with short barrels; the clean, uncluttered lines of old outlaw choppers, old pawn jewelry, and small fuzzy critters with equal abandon. He has a soft spot in his heart for The Virgin of Guadalupe, tide pools, house cats, quiet bars, innocent strippers, and jaded children. He is a warrior, a poet, and a storyteller who is not afraid to dance in public when the mood strikes him. He is a product of the mean streets of the greatest Midwestern industrial cities of a time now long gone; a place where the high court of street justice was between the curbs. He spent his youth on the shores of the post-industrial Great Lakes in tattoo shops, pizza parlors, dark corner corner bars, speed shops, and outlaw motorcycle clubhouses.

He came west to the high desert in the late 1980s and quickly disappeared down the rabbit hole of Southwestern outlaw drug culture. He emerged from that hole in 2008; close to death and with a solid quarter century of hard drug abuse under his belt. He has, needless to say, a great many regrets. Along the way he’s also worked legally as a mechanic, heavy equipment operator, strip club bouncer, repossession agent, tattoo shop owner, private investigator, tow truck driver, snow plow operator, wildland firefighter, and college English teacher.

These days he’s retired from a great many things but remains in love with language, family, citrus trees, the open road and the shrines, artifacts, and monuments to loss that litter it. He sees these things as reflections of his own damaged soul and scattered memory. He spends his time writing and promoting the art of both the written word and storytelling. He also still does a bit of driving, pool hall bouncing, and firefighting when the mood strikes him. You can usually find him in the dying Ponderosa Pine forests surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona, or the old barrios of Tucson, Arizona. Otherwise he is probably somewhere out on the highway documenting on Facebook the passing of his beloved but rapidly disappearing American West and pondering the fleeting nature of memory, sin, spirituality, and forgiveness.

Caroline Tracey

Caroline Tracey is a writer and geographer. Originally from Colorado, she is currently a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also held a Fulbright research fellowship to Kyrgyzstan and worked as a cattle ranch hand. Her writing appears in 3:AM, The Guardian, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere, and her literary translation has appeared in The Offing. Find her at cetracey.wordpress.com and @seaisrisn.

Heath Wing

Heath Wing, a West Texas native, received a PhD in Spanish with a Portuguese Minor from Texas Tech University in 2015. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Spanish at North Dakota State University. He teaches courses in Latin American civilization and culture, Latin American literature, Spanish American women writers, and Chicano literature. Aside from his research, he also translates poetry and prose for contemporary Latin American writers. He has published poetry translations for the Spanish poet Sara Gallardo in Shadowgraph and Fishousepoems, as well as poetry translations for the Argentine writer Federico Falco, which appear in Hinchas de Poesía. He is currently translating for three Brazilian writers: Ana Martins Marques, Ramon Mello, and Marcílio França Castro. Since arriving to Fargo in 2015, he has become an avid curler and stone thrower.