Contributors to Issue XVIII
Jessica Abughattas
Jessica Abughattas is an American poet of Palestinian heritage. Her work appears in Redivider, Muzzle, The Journal, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Antioch University. She is a Kundiman fellow, an editor for Palette Poetry and Write Bloody, and a Scorpio.
Emilie Pascale Beck
Emilie Pascale Beck is a playwright, director, and dramaturg, living in Los Angeles, where she is Literary Manager at the Boston Court Theatre (not in Boston). She received her MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her writing has been published in Colorado Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and online in Howlround and LA Stage. As a playwright she has been a finalist for the Smith Prize. “What She Is Not” is adapted from a chapter in her novel, She Is.
Krys Malcolm Belc
Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of the flash nonfiction chapbook In Transit (The Cupboard Pamphlet) and his essays have appeared in Granta, Black Warrior Review, Sonora Review, Brevity, and elsewhere. His work has won contests at Redivider and Pigeon Pages and has been supported by the Sustainable Arts Foundation. He lives with his partner and three children in snowy Marquette, Michigan.
Kelly Boyker
Kelly Boyker’s poetry has appeared or shall appear in many places, including PANK, Prick of the Spindle, FRiGG, Pretty Owl Poetry, Vinyl Poetry, and others. She has received a number of award nominations (Best New Poets, Pushcart, Best of the Net), but no actual awards. Her work has been included in a number of print anthologies in the U.S.A. and Canada, has been translated and published in Italian, and has been made into small films. Her chapbook Zoonosis (Hyacinth Girl Press) was listed by Entropy as one of the best sixteen poetry books published in 2014. In her free time she enjoys gardening, food science, and gaming.
Dorothy Chan
Dorothy Chan is the author of Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, March 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a 2019 recipient of the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing from Cornell University, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Quarterly West, The Offing, and elsewhere. Chan is the former Editor of The Southeast Review and Poetry Editor of Hobart. Starting in Fall 2019, she will be an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com.
Armen Davoudian
Armen Davoudian’s poems and translations from Persian have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Literary Matters, and elsewhere. He is a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and has received fellowships from the ALSCW and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is currently pursuing a PhD in English at Stanford University.
Dana Diehl
Dana Diehl earned her MFA at Arizona State University. She is the author of Our Dreams Might Align (Splice UK, 2018) and The Classroom (Gold Wake Press, 2019). Her chapbook, TV Girls, won the 2017-2018 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest. She lives in Tucson.
Patrick Donnelly and
Stephen D. Miller
Patrick Donnelly is the author of four books of poetry, Little-Known Operas (Four Way Books, 2019), Jesus Said (a chapbook from Orison Books, 2017), Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012, a Lambda Literary Award finalist), and The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press). Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including The Kenyon Review Online, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Donnelly’s awards include a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program Award, an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a 2018 Amy Clampitt Residency Award. Donnelly was 2015 – 2017 poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts.
Stephen D. Miller, associate professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is author of The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013), which includes co-translations of Japanese Buddhist poems with Patrick Donnelly. Miller is translator of A Pilgrim’s Guide to Forty-Six Temples (Weatherhill Inc., 1990), and editor of Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature (Gay Sunshine Press, 1996). Miller lived in Japan for nine years between 1980 and 1999, in part as the recipient of two Japan Foundation fellowships for research abroad.
Donnelly’s and Miller’s translations in The Wind from Vulture Peak were awarded the 2015-2016 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University. Their translation of the 16th century Japanese Nō play Shunzei Tadanori appeared in Like Clouds or Mists: Studies and Translations of Nō Plays of the Genpei War (Cornell East Asia Series, 2014).
Carl-Christian Elze
Carl-Christian Elze lives in Leipzig and writes poems, short stories and plays. He studied biology and German studies at the University of Leipzig, and later creative writing at the Deutsche Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Recent awards for his work include the Joachim-Ringelnatz Prize (2015) and residencies at the Künstlerhaus Edenkoben (2017) and the Deutsche Studienzentrum in Venice (2016), where he wrote the poems for his latest book langsames ermatten im labyrinth (Verlagshaus Berlin, 2019). Other recent books include, diese kleinen, in der luft hängenden, bergpredigenden gebilde: poems (Verlagshaus Berlin, 2016), and Oda und der ausgestopfte Vater (kreuzerbooks, 2018).
William Evans
William Evans is a writer and instructor from Columbus, Ohio. He is a Callaloo Fellow, Sustainable Arts Awardee, and a candidate for a Masters In Fine Arts at Randolph College. He is the author of three poetry collections including Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair (Button, 2017) and the forthcoming We Inherit What The Fires Left (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Rodney Gómez
Rodney Gómez is the author of Citizens of the Mausoleum and Ceremony of Sand. His work appears in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Gettysburg Review, Blackbird, North American Review, Pleaides, Denver Quarterly, Verse Daily, and other journals. He is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop and works at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. In 2020 he will serve as the Poet Laureate of the city of McAllen, Texas.
Melissa Goodrich
Melissa Goodrich is the author of the collaborative collection The Classroom and the story collection Daughters of Monsters. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Kenyon Review Online, and others, and her honors include the 2018 Passages North Waasnode Fiction Prize, the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books Fiction Award, the 2013 Margaret Sterling Memorial Award. Find her at melissa-goodrich.com and tweeting @good_rib.
S.N. Haleʻole
S.N. Haleʻole was a famous Native Hawaiian composer who documented the oral tradition of Lāʻieikawai into the written word. Educated at the Lahainaluna Seminary alongside other Native Hawaiian intellectuals like Davida Malo, Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau, and John Papa ʻĪʻī, Haleʻole served multiple roles in the Hawaiian Kingdom. In addition to his responsibility as a writer, Haleʻole was also a historian, teacher, and editor of the newspaper Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika.
Matt Hart
Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including Everything Breaking/for Good (YesYes Books) and The Obliterations (forthcoming from Pickpocket Books). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Jam Tarts Magazine, jubilat, Kenyon Review Online, Lungfull!, and POETRY Magazine, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW.
Bob Hicok
Bob Hicok’s most recent book is Hold (Copper Canyon, 2018).
Stephen Hundley
Stephen Hundley’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Carve, Permafrost, and other journals. He serves as the fiction editor for The Swamp and is a Richard Ford Fellow at the University of Mississippi. Some of his work can be viewed at his website.
Jakuzen
Jakuzen was a 12th century priest of the Buddhist Tendai sect who resided outside the capital of Kyoto in Ōhara. His two brothers, Jakuchō and Jakunen, were also poet-priests. Together, the three were known as the Ōhara sanjaku (the three “jaku” of Ōhara). Jakuzen left behind three manuscripts of waka poetry; that forty-seven of his poems were published in several imperial poetry anthologies of the late 12th century and later is a mark of how highly they were regarded. One of Jakuzen’s most famous collections is the Hōmon hyakushu (One Hundred Poems of the Dharma Gate). As the first one-hundred-poem private anthology of shakkyō-ka (Buddhist-themed poems), Jakuzen’s Hōmon Hyakushu sits at the juncture between the Japanese court’s ongoing literary and religious projects, exemplifying the late-Heian period (794 – 1185) formula kadō soku butsudō: “the way of poetry is none other than the Buddha-way.”
Brock Kingsley
Brock Kingsley’s essays and photographs have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Compose, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Paste, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. He has been a contributor at The Nervous Breakdown and written about music for This Is Not A Drill. He lives and teaches in Fort Worth, Texas.
William Lychack
Photo: Marion EttlingerWilliam Lychack is the author, most recently, of the forthcoming novel Cargill Falls. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and on public radio’s This American Life. He currently teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of five previous books, including a novel, The Wasp Eater, a collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers, a cultural history of cement, and two children’s books.
Michael Mark
Michael Mark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Arkansas International, Columbia Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Sun, Verse Daily, and The Poetry Foundation’s American Life in Poetry, and other nice places. He’s the author of two books of stories, Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum).
Jennifer Militello
Jennifer Militello is the author, most recently, of A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo Press, 2016) and Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, POETRY, and Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.
Teo Mungaray
Teo Mungaray is a queer, chronically ill, latinx poet. He holds an MFA from Pacific University of Oregon and is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a co-founder and co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph. His poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from The Shade Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Sycamore Review, and Birdfeast. He has a cat named Lysistrata.
Sequoia Nagamatsu
Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (Black Lawrence Press), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Review’s Indies Book of the Year Award and an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Conjunctions, ZYZZYVA, The Fairy Tale Review, Tin House online, Black Warrior Review, Willow Springs, The Bellevue Literary Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, among others. Originally from Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area, he was educated at Grinnell College and Southern Illinois University. He co-edits Psychopomp Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to innovative prose, and teaches at St. Olaf College. He lives in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, and their cat Kalahira. He is currently working on a second story collection and a novel. See more at sequoianagamatsu.com.
James O’Bannon
James O’Bannon was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and currently resides in Fresno, California. He is a graduate of the Northern Kentucky University creative writing program and a soon-to-be graduate of the MFA program at Fresno State University. His writing has appeared in Spry Literary Journal, Switchback Magazine, and Flies, Cockroaches and Poets.
Yamini Pathak
Yamini Pathak is a freelance writer and poet who lives in New Jersey. She was born and raised in India. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared, or are forthcoming in Anomaly, The Kenyon Review blog, Rattle, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Jaggery, The Hindu, and elsewhere. She is an alumnus of VONA/Voices and the Community of Writers.
Blake Planty
Blake Planty loves crawling the web at the witching hour. He has fiction and essays published and forthcoming in Nat Brut, DREGINALD, Heavy Feather Review, GASHER Journal, The Fanzine, Tenderness Lit, and more. Find him talking about cyborgs and coffee at @_dispossessed on Twitter and online at catboy.club.
Caroline Wilcox Reul
Photo: Nina Johnson PhotographyCaroline Wilcox Reul is the translator of Wer lebt / Who Lives by German poet Elisabeth Borchers (Tavern Books, 2017) and the poetry editor for the Timberline Review. She was awarded the Summer/Fall 2018 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation and Multilingual Texts. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in the PEN Poetry Series, Tupelo Quarterly, Poetry International, Lunch Ticket, The Los Angeles Review, Exchanges, Newfound and others.
Noʻu Revilla
Noʻu Revilla is a Native Hawaiian queer feminist poet and educator. Her work has been published in Poetry, Literary Hub, Black Renaissance Noire, and Poem of the Week by Kore Press. She has performed throughout Hawaiʻi and in Canada, in Papua New Guinea, and at the United Nations. Her recent chapbook Permission to Make Digging Sounds was anthologized in Effigies III by Salt Publishing. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa.
Sohrab Sepehri
سهراب سپهری Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) was one of Iran’s foremost modernist writers. A painter as well as a poet, a student of Buddhist as well as Islamic thought, he perfected a lean but playful style where he merged world with word, the leaves of his childhood landscape with the leaves of his books.
Sean Singer
Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; and Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015). He drives a taxi in New York City.
Laurie Stone
Laurie Stone is author most recently of My Life as an Animal, Stories. She was a longtime writer for the Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation, and critic-at-large on Fresh Air. She won the Nona Balakian prize in excellence in criticism from the National Book Critics Circle and two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her stories have appeared N + 1, Tin House, Evergreen Review, Fence, Open City, Anderbo, The Collagist, Your impossible Voice, TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, and Creative Nonfiction. She has just completed her next book, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening, a collage of hybrid narratives. Her website is lauriestonewriter.com.
Jenniey Tallman
Jenniey Tallman currently lives in Iowa City with her husband and their three sons. Recent work appears in Wigleaf, The Austin Review, DIAGRAM, Electric Lit’s Recommending Reading, and Nashville Review, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention and Sustainable Arts Foundation award.
Taryn Tilton
Taryn Tilton writes and translates. Her novella, Cherry Cherry, won the 2017 Plaza Literary Prize.
Steffan Triplett
Steffan Triplett is an essayist and instructor from Joplin, Missouri. He received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis where he was a John B. Ervin Scholar. Some of his work can be found in Longreads, Electric Literature, DIAGRAM, Fence, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, and the forthcoming Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. Steffan has been a fellow for Callaloo and Lambda Literary.
Annette Wong
Annette Wong is working on a first collection of poems. Her work has been supported by the AWP Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, VONA, and Writing Workshops Los Angeles. This July, she will be starting at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she has been awarded The Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches meditation and practices law.
Jennifer Wortman
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love (Split Lip Press, 2019). Her work appears in Glimmer Train, Normal School,
Lauren Yarnall
Lauren Yarnall recently graduated from the University of Idaho, where she received her MFA and worked as the co-editor-in-chief of Fugue Journal. Lauren is a Centrum fellow and Pushcart nominee, as well as a Best of the Net nominee, a Best New Poets nominee, and the finalist for Yemassee's 2018 Poetry Contest. Lauren's work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Thrush Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.
