Contributors to Issue XXXI
Emily Ross Koch
Emily Ross Koch has worked in emergency medicine for over 20 years in various capacities. At George Washington University, to train emergency health providers, she serves as coordinator of emergency health education on and off campus. In her free time she enjoys volunteering at the elementary school that her three children attend and camping on Assateague Island. This is her second published photo. The first was in 3Elements. She also published an article about her grandfather, Lawson Ramage, in a book about Medal of Honor winners. Previously, she shared a spoken version of that article in an invited speech at the National Press Club. She obtained her Bachelors in nursing at Georgetown University.
Alexa Luborsky
Alexa Luborsky is a writer and multimedia artist of Western Armenian and Jewish descent. She is the 2023 Creative Writing Grant Recipient from the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) for her work-in-progress poetry collection on diaspora and genocidal aftermaths. Her poems and hybrid works have appeared or are forthcoming in Adroit, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, and West Branch, among other journals. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Virginia, she serves as the interviews editor for Poetry Northwest. You can find out more at alexaluborsky.com.
N.S. Ahmed
N.S. Ahmed is an Egyptian-American writer based in New York City. His writings have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as Joyland, Passages North, The Margins (AAWW), The Lumiere Review, The Offing, and the New York Public Library. Currently, he is a CUNY Pipeline Fellow, a CLS Scholar, a TEDx speaker, a Periplus Collective Fellow, a Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, and a recent graduate and Hertog Research Fellow at Hunter College's MFA program for creative fiction. He is presently working on a novel and short story collection.
Becca Klaver
Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collections LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010), Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016), and Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), as well as several chapbooks. Her latest publications are Midwinter Constellation (Black Lawrence, 2022), a collaborative homage to Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day, and Greetings from Bowling Green (The Magnificent Field, 2022), a chapbook of postcard poems. As an editor, she co-founded Switchback Books, is currently co-editing the anthology Electric Gurlesque (Saturnalia Books), and has created pop-up projects such as Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants. She lives in Iowa City, where she works as Program Manager of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Brian Czyzyk
Brian Czyzyk is a poet from Traverse City, Michigan. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, RHINO, Gulf Coast, Passages North, and The Offing. He is currently a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of North Texas where he serves as Managing Editor for American Literary Review. He wishes you the best.
Claire Hopple
Claire Hopple is the author of six books and the fiction editor at XRAY. Her stories have appeared in Wigleaf, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Forever Mag, and others. Read more of her work at clairehopple.com.
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021); and It’s Important I Remember (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in POETRY, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
David Joez Villaverde
David Joez Villaverde holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. A CantoMundo fellow, he has received honors from the American Academy of Poets, Best New Poets, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Black Warrior Review. His poetry has appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, AGNI, and FENCE, and is forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and Ninth Letter. He lives in New York and can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com.
Derek Ellis
Derek Ellis is from rural Kentucky. He holds an MFA from the University of Maryland, and is currently a PhD Candidate at Binghamton University. His work has appeared in Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art, Prairie Schooner, Action Spectacle, BODY, and Leavings Literature Magazine.
Erika Luckert
Erika Luckert is a poet, educator, and scholar. A recipient of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, Erika's work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, CALYX, Tampa Review, The Rumpus, Epiphany, Boston Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Erika received her MFA at Columbia University, and her PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Composition at the University of Southern Mississippi. Find more at www.erikaluckert.com.
Jarrett Moseley
Jarrett Moseley is a bisexual poet living in Miami, where he was a James A. Michener fellow in the University of Miami's MFA program. He is the author of the chapbook Gratitude List (Bull City Press, 2024). His poetry has won awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Baltimore Review, earned an honorable mention for the Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowship, and been long listed for the Poetry Society’s 2022 National Poetry Competition. His poems are featured or forthcoming in Ploughshares, POETRY, AGNI, Poets.org, Baltimore Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Florida Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.
Jessica Tanck
Jessica Tanck is the author of Winter Here (UGA Press, 2024), winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize. Her writing appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review, among others. The recipient of a Vice Presidential Fellowship and a Clarence Snow Memorial Fellowship, Jess lives and writes in Salt Lake City, where she is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.
Joe Baumann
Joe Baumann is the author of four collections of short fiction, most recently Where Can I Take You When There’s Nowhere to Go, from BOA Editions, and the novels I Know You’re Out There Somewhere and Lake, Drive. His fiction and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Passages North, Phantom Drift, and many others. He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction. He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com.
Joseph Omoh Ndukwu
Joseph Omoh Ndukwu is a writer and editor. His work has appeared in Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Off Assignment, Transition, and elsewhere. His essays on art and photography have appeared in Contemporary And, The Brooklyn Rail, The Sole Adventurer, The Republic, and in catalogues and journals. In 2021, he was selected for the Momus Emerging Critics Residency, and in 2022, he won Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing. He is currently associate editor at A Long House.
Lydia Gwyn
Lydia Gwyn is the author of the flash fiction collections: You'll Never Find Another (2021, Matter Press) and Tiny Doors (2018, Another New Calligraphy). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best Microfictions 2024, Mom Egg Review, F(r)iction, The Florida Review, Elm Leaves Journal, and others. A selection of pieces from her new collection “Emptiness, Standing Still” is available in Issue 22 of Ravenna Press’s Triples Series. She lives with her family in East Tennessee, where she works as an academic librarian.
Margaret Ray
Margaret Ray grew up in Gainesville, Florida. She is the author of Good Grief, The Ground (BOA Editions, 2023, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize selected by Stephanie Burt) and the chapbook Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic (2022, selected by Jericho Brown for the 2020 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize). Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Best New Poets 2021, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. A winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize and a shortlister for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize (UK), she holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches in New Jersey. She’s less and less online on the website formerly known as Twitter (& BlueSky) @mbrrray, slightly more regularly on Instagram/Threads @m_rrray. Find more of her work at www.margaretbray.com.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Mubanga Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the author of The Mourning Bird (Jacana), unmarked graves (Tusculum University Press) and Obligations to the Wounded (University of Pittsburgh Press). She is also the winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize (2024), selected by Angie Cruz; the Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest (2022), selected by Carmen Giménez; the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award (2019); and the Kalemba Short Story Prize (2019). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Overland, adda, Contemporary Verse 2, and elsewhere. Her creative practice has received support from the Young African Leadership Initiative, the Hubert H. Humphrey (Fulbright) Fellowship, the Hawkinson Scholarship for Peace and Justice, the Africa Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is the founding editor of Ubwali Literary Magazine, a current Miles Morland Scholar, and a PhD student at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where she is also an Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) scholar.
Paola Bruni
Paola Bruni is originally from San Francisco and now lives in Aptos, California, by the sea. She began writing poetry in 2016 after a long marketing career. Pushcart nominated, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Five Points Journal, The Birmingham Review, Rattle, Adroit, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize and the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Prize.
Priya Ele
Priya Ele (she/her) is a recent graduate from New York University. She has work in a variety of magazines, most recently in Passages North. Her play Red Handed went up at the Soho Playhouse in 2023 and her play Rose of the World was featured in the Elif Bet Reading Series in 2024. She currently lives in Ireland. Read more at www.priyaele.com.
Rick Barot
Rick Barot's newest book of poems is Moving the Bones, to be published by Milkweed Editions in Fall 2024. His previous collection, The Galleons, was longlisted for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, The Adroit Journal, and The New Yorker. He lives in Tacoma, Washington, and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University.
S. Brook Corfman
S. Brook Corfman is the author of My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, one of The New York Times Best Poetry Books of 2020, finalist for the Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature, and winner of the Fordham University Press POL Prize, chosen by Cathy Park Hong. She is also the author of the poetry collection Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, and several chapbooks including Frames (Belladonna* Books). In 2024 she received the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Sappho Stanley
Sappho Stanley (they/she) is a trans, Appalachian poet. They are a poetry candidate in The Ohio State University’s Creative Writing MFA. She serves as Poetry Editor and Production Editor at The Journal. You can find their work in or forthcoming in New Delta Review, Hunger Mountain, and West Trade Review, as well as others. Find her on any social media with @sapphostanley.
Sara Elkamel
Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist and translator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, among other publications. A Pushcart Prize winner, Elkamel was also awarded Southeast Review’s 2023 Gearhart Poetry Prize, Michigan Quarterly Review's 2022 Goldstein Poetry Prize, Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and Redivider’s 2021 Blurred Genre Contest. She is the author of the chapbook Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021).
Satya Dash
Satya Dash is a recipient of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Broken River Prize. His poems appear in Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Cincinnati Review, and DIAGRAM, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Nina Riggs Poetry Award, Orison Anthology, and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets @satya043.
Seth Leeper
Seth Leeper is a queer poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, The Journal, Pithead Chapel, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Salamander, and Sycamore Review. He holds an M.S. in Special Education from Pace University and B.A. in Creative Writing and Fashion Journalism from San Francisco State University. He is a candidate in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Randolph College. His work has been nominated for inclusion in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Pushcart anthologies. He teaches drop-in and virtual workshops for Brooklyn Poets. He can be found on socials @sethwleeper.
Shirley Chan
Shirley Chan is writing a memoir about growing up in a Chinese restaurant. She is the senior nonfiction editor for the ASP Bulletin and co-founder of the Oakland reading series Secret Nook (@secret.nook on Instagram). Shirley is the recipient of a Rooted & Written fellowship and is an alum of Tin House Summer Workshop, Manuscript Boot Camp, and Writing by Writers Tomales Bay. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, HAD, Longleaf Review, Paranoid Tree, Roi Fainéant, and other publications. When the words part of her brain needs a break, Shirley creates mixed media art. Learn more at irleywrites.com and hang out on socials @irleywrites.
Shlagha Borah
Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, ANMLY, Salamander, Nashville Review, Florida Review, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is an Editorial Assistant at The Offing. She is a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets, The Hambidge Center, The Peter Bullough Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. She co-founded Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. Find her on Instagram @shlaghab and Twitter @shlaghaborah.
