Contributors to Issue XXXIV
Dora Ilce
Dora Ilce is a Polish-Dutch illustrator with a fondness for anthropomorphic animals. She works mainly with pencils, ink, and digital tools. You can find more of her work at dorailce.com and on Instagram at @sometimesketches.
Amanda Chiado
Amanda Chiado holds degrees from the University of New Mexico, California College of the Arts, and Grand Canyon University. Her chapbook Prime Cuts was just released from Bottlecap Press, and she is the author of Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has most recently appeared in Southeast Review, RHINO, The Pinch Journal, The Offing. She is an alumna of the Community of Writers and the Highlights Foundation. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press.
Amorak Huey
Amorak Huey is author of Mouth, forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press, and four previous collections of poetry. Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey directs the creative writing program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Ashton Freeman
Ashton Freeman is a Brooklyn-based writer and artist. They are pursuing their MFA at The New School and received their BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2023. Freeman's work has appeared in Foglifter, Milk Press, and Love & Squalor. They are a nominee for the 2025 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. To find their work, search under rocks, in your sock drawer, and the late afternoon.
Dennis Hinrichsen
Dennis Hinrichsen is the author of twelve books of poetry including dementia lyrics (forthcoming 2026), Dominion + Selected Poems, Flesh-plastique, and schema geometrica from Green Linden Press. He has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Action, Spectacle, Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, Midwest Review, Third Coast, and Under a Warm Green Linden. He lives in Lansing, Michigan.
Diana Cao
Diana Cao's poetry and fiction have appeared in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Just Buffalo Literary Center. Her debut collection, Slipstream, won the 2024 Berkshire Prize, selected by Matthew Rohrer, and is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2026.
Diane Zinna
Diane Zinna is the author of the novel The All-Night Sun (Random House) and Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss, a forthcoming craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories. Her short work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Brevity, The Bellevue Literary Review, CutBank, MER, and elsewhere. Since 2020, she has led the free online class Grief Writing Sundays. Meet her there or at www.dianezinna.com.
Dom Blanco
Dom Blanco is a Cuban American poet originally from Miami, FL, now based in Bloomingdale, Illinois, on the ancestral lands of the Potawatomi Nation. He holds a BA in Philosophy from DePaul University and an MFA from Randolph College. His poems are forthcoming/featured in MĀNOA Journal (Architectures of FuturoPasados Issue, guest-edited by Anthony Cody), The Acentos Review, Huizache, The Brooklyn Review, Rise Up Review, and more. Dom is the recipient of generous support from the Nancy Craig Blackburn Program.
Dustin Pearson
Dustin Pearson is the author of A Season in Hell with Rimbaud (BOA Editions, 2022), winner of the 2024 Nancy Dasher Book Award, Millennial Roost (C&R Press, 2018), and A Family Is a House (C&R Press, 2019). In 2019, The Root named Dustin one of nine Black poets working in “academic, cultural and government institutions committed to elevating and preserving the poetry artform.” In 2020, a film adaptation of his poem “The Flame in Mother’s Mouth” won Best Collaboration at the Cadence Video Poetry Festival. The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, The Anderson Center at Tower View, and the Watering Hole, Pearson has served as the editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and a director of the Clemson Literary Festival. His writing has been recognized and featured by Shonda Rhimes and further distinguished by the Katherine C. Turner and John Mackay Shaw Academy of American Poets Awards and a 2021 Pushcart Prize. His work also appears in The Nation, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird, The Boiler, Bennington Review, TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Toledo where he teaches creative writing and literature.
Elisha Mykelti
Elisha Mykelti is a poet from Tennessee. Her poems can be found in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Torch Literary Arts, and Berkeley Poetry Review. Elisha holds a BA in English from the University of Tennessee and an MFA from Virginia Tech. When she's not writing, she’s dancing, serving on the editorial board for Sundress Publications, and/or daydreaming.
Emily Skaja
Emily Skaja is the author of Brute, winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her second book, Black Lake, is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2026. Her work appears in American Poetry Review, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the founding editor of the Poetry Prompt Generator, an online resource for poets and educators, and she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Memphis.
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey is a California transplant living in Portland, Oregon. In their writing, they hope to explore human-nature relation and deconstruct binaries that cast humankind in opposition to the natural world. Their work appears in publications such as Adroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and the Cincinnati Review. They can be found on Instagram/X/Bluesky @esmepromise
Hafsa Zulfiqar
Hafsa Zulfiqar is a poet, editor, and literary critic from Sindh, Pakistan. She is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University. Her work, which has received three Best of the Net, a Pushcart nomination, and the support of grants and fellowships from We Need Diverse Books and Brooklyn Poets, can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Pleiades, swamp pink, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, The Margins, Poetry Wales, Lunch Ticket, The Adroit Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, & elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine and as an assistant editor for EPOCH. You can find her on Twitter @HafsaZUnar and Instagram @vibingwithabook
Hiwot Adilow
Hiwot Adilow is an Ethiopian-American poet from Southwest Philadelphia. She is author of the chapbooks In The House of My Father (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and Prodigal Daughter (Akashic Books, 2019). Hiwot is co-winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and is a fellow of The Watering Hole, Anaphora Writing Residency, and VONA. She holds a BA in Anthropology with a certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Read more about her at www.hiwotadilow.com
ire’ne lara silva
ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; a comic book, VENDAVAL; and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2025 Storyknife Writers Residency, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Spring 2026. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com
Jake Syersak
Jake Syersak is the author of the poetry books Yield Architecture (2018) and Mantic Compost (2022). He is also the translator of several works by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine. His work has received grants from The National Endowment of the Arts and PEN/Heim. He lives in Olympia, Washington.
JC Andrews
JC Andrews is a lesbian poet from Springfield, Arkansas, with an interest in poems that work as an un-ing, poems that hold questions as a form of caretaking. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, and Salt Hill Journal. Most recently, her manuscript, Of an Ilk, was a finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series, and her poem “Gargoyle” was the first runner-up of the Palette Poetry 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets judged by Megan Fernandes.
J. L. Bermúdez
J. L. Bermúdez is a queer Nicaraguan-American from sunny South Florida. She received her MFA from Florida Atlantic University, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Swamp Ape Review. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, and can be found in New Delta Review, Quarter After Eight, and Saw Palm, among others. Her nonfiction has been published in Passages North, Chestnut Review, and is upcoming in Phoebe. When she isn’t writing, she loves going to the beach and playing fetch with her Boston Terrier, Odysseus.
Lisa Compo
Lisa Compo has forthcoming or recently published poems in journals such as: Colorado Review, DIALOGIST, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a PhD student in SUNY Binghamton’s creative writing program and obtained her MFA from UNC – Greensboro. She has received several nominations for the Pushcart award and Best of the Net. She is the social media manager for The Shore.
Mai-Linh Hong
Mai-Linh Hong is a Vietnamese American refugee poet and literary scholar. Her debut poetry collection, Continental Drift, won the 2025 Trio Award and will be published by Trio House Press. Her poetry appears/is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Minnesota Review, ANMLY, Wildness, and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, VONA, and Tin House. She is coauthor and coeditor of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (University of California Press, 2021) and teaches literature at the University of California, Merced.
Marshall Woodward
Marshall Woodward is a writer and researcher from the Gulf Coast. Recent writing appears in or is forthcoming from Annulet, Antiphony Fence, The Indiana Review, postmedieval, and The Seneca Review. He recently graduated from the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program (MFA) where he worked as a poetry editor for the journal Gulf Coast and received the Mitchell fellowship for interdisciplinary arts in his work at the intersection of contemporary poetry and medieval studies.
Meagan Arthur
Meagan Arthur is a cross-genre writer from the Seattle area. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Utah. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, River Styx, American Literary Review, The Journal, Puerto Del Sol, Quarter After Eight, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. She serves as the Senior Prose Editor of Quarterly West.
Myles Zavelo
Myles Zavelo lives in London. His writing has appeared in Joyland, New York Tyrant, The Harvard Advocate, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere.
Nina C. Peláez
Nina C. Peláez is a poet, essayist, educator & cultural producer interested in themes of displacement, diaspora, ecology, and resilience. Her writing appears in journals including The Atlantic, The Iowa Review, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, Pleiades, Rattle, RHINO, swamp pink, and Willow Springs, and has been supported by Tin House, Yaddo, AWP, Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Key West Literary Seminars. She is the recent recipient of the Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship from the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, a Barbara Deming Memorial Scholarship, and Radar’s Coniston Prize. She is a Tin House Reading Fellow, mentors for The Adroit Journal, and is Associate Director of The Merwin Conservancy. She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars where she was a 2025 Alumni Teaching Fellow.
Shefali Trivedi
Shefali Trivedi, PhD is an Indian-American writer and social scientist who grew up in the rural Midwest. Her creative writing has been supported by Kimmel Harding Nelson and the Hambidge Center and published in OFIC Magazine. She has served as a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops and is the recipient of the Frances Mason Harris Prize. Shefali holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner and two children. "American August" is her fiction debut.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Tahar Ben Jelloun is an acclaimed poet, novelist, scholar, and human rights activist. In 1966, he was interned in a military camp for participating in student demonstrations against the Moroccan government. There, he wrote his first poems and discovered his passion for writing, eventually establishing himself as one of the most outstanding writers of the Souffles-Anfas generation. He went into exile in France in 1971, where he received a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Paris and authored numerous works, including The Sacred Night (1987)—for which he became the first African-born recipient of the Prix Goncourt—and This Blinding Absence of Light (2004), which received the International Dublin Literary Award. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. He lives in Paris.
Tori Rego
Tori Rego is a writer from Charleston, South Carolina. She currently lives in Chicago where she co-hosts the monthly reading series Written on a Napkin. Her poetry chapbook Briefly, Gently can be purchased through Bottlecap Press. A full list of her publications can be found on her website at www.torirego.com.
Traci Brimhall
Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon, 2024). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the currently the poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum and poet laureate for the State of Kansas.
