Issue One Hundred and Five
N. Michelle AuBuchon holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in San Diego with her husband and daughter. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals such as The Iowa Review, The Rupture, BuzzFeed, New Orleans Review, Washington Square, and Gawker. She has recently completed a memoir.
Emily Banks is the author of Mother Water (Lynx House Press, 2019). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Cortland Review, The Southampton Review, New South, Glass (Poets Resist), Superstition Review, Yemassee, Cimarron Review, and other journals. She lives in Atlanta, where she is a doctoral candidate at Emory University.
Beverly Burch's third poetry collection, Latter Days of Eve, won the John Ciardi Poetry Prize and will appear in the fall of 2019. Her work has won a Lambda Literary Award, the Gival Poetry Prize and been a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Poetry and fiction have appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Cortland Review, New England Review, Catamaran, Willow Springs, Salamander, Tinderbox, Mudlark, Barrow Street, and Poetry Northwest.
Meriwether Clarke is a poet and educator living in Los Angeles. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, The Cimarron Review, Tin House (Online), Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook twenty-first century woman (DancingGirl, 2019). You can find her @MeriwetherC.
Shaina Clingempeel works as Programs Manager and Poetry Teacher for Trilok School in Brooklyn, NY. Previously, she obtained her Poetry MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She appreciates all that is feminist, speculative, andexistential. Poems of hers can be found in Perch Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, The Westchester Review, The Heartland Review, Free State Review, Poetry Quarterly, The City Quill, Santa Clara Review, Fishfood Magazine, and other places.
Paul Crenshaw is the author of the essay collections This One Will Hurt You, published by The Ohio State University Press, and This We'll Defend, from the University of North Carolina Press. Other work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Pushcart Prize, anthologies by W.W. Norton and Houghton Mifflin, Oxford American, Glimmer Train, Tin House, North American Review and Brevity, among others. "Curtains" is one of a new collection of micro-memoirs.
John David Harding is an associate professor of writing/research in the Cannon Memorial Library at Saint Leo University. He serves as the assistant director of Sandhill Writers Retreat and coedits the literary journals Lightning Key Review and Orange Blossom Review. His creative work includes publications in fiction, poetry, and visual art.
Darren Higgins is a writer, editor, and artist living in Waterbury Center, Vermont. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Darren has contributed essays, reviews, interviews, and commentaries to Numero Cinq, Jacket2, Poetry International, and Vermont Public Radio. His poems and stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, Quick Fiction, RAZED, Cosmonauts Avenue, Treehouse, Tupelo Quarterly, Bloodroot, and elsewhere.
Tracey Kry lives and works in Massachusetts. She is an MFA candidate at Western New England University, and serves as fiction editor for Common Ground Review. Her piece in The Rupture is her first publication.
Erika Luckert is a poet, writer, and educator. A graduate of Columbia's MFA in Poetry, she has taught creative and critical writing at public schools and colleges across New York City. In 2017, Erika was awarded the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, she is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Alice Maglio's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, The Rupture, Wigleaf, and Gone Lawn. She lives in New York and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
David Nutt is the author of The Great American Suction (Tyrant Books). His fiction has appeared in Hobart, The American Reader, New York Tyrant, Green Mountains Review, Juked, Open City, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Ithaca, NY, with his wife and dog and two cats.
Martin Ott is an LA writer and the author of nine books of poetry and fiction, including Underpays (University of Notre Dame Press) and his most recent book, Fake New Poems (BlazeVOX Books). His work has appeared in twenty anthologies and more than two hundred magazines, including Antioch Review, Epoch, Harvard Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Zyzzyva.
Glen Pourciau's first collection of stories, Invite, won the 2008 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His second story collection, View, was published in 2017 by Four Way Books, and his forthcoming collection will be published by Four Way in 2021. His stories have appeared in AGNI Online, Epoch, New England Review, New World Writing, The Paris Review, Post Road, and others.
David Leo Rice is a writer and animator from Northampton, MA, currently living in NYC. His stories and essays have appeared in The Believer, Catapult, Black Clock, Fanzine, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His first novel, A Room in Dodge City, came out in 2017, and his second, ANGEL HOUSE, came out in 2019. A Room in Dodge City: Vol. 2 is forthcoming in 2020.
Michelle Ross is the author of There's So Much They Haven't Told You (2017), which won the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, The Pinch, The Southeast Review, and other venues. She's fiction editor of Atticus Review.
Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and an Emerson Fellow at New America. He has previously received fellowships from the Art for Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation, and his writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published in 2016, and won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in addition to being a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His debut nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed, is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
Bessie Taliaferro is a Creative Writing MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied under T Kira Madden in 2018. Bessie's work has appeared in Rawckus and Medium. She lives in New York City.
Danilo John Thomas is the author of the chapbooks The Hand Implements, published by The Cupboard Pamphlet, and Murk, fine letterpress printed by book artist AB Gorham. His fiction won the 2017-18 Ryan R Gibbs Flash Fiction Award from New Delta Review and other work currently appears or is forthcoming in the Matchbook Vol. 5 from Small Fires Press, Tampa Review, Fugue, and High Desert Journal. Born and raised in Montana, he earned his PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and his MFA from the University of Alabama. He manages Baobab Press in Reno, Nevada.
Michael VanCalbergh currently lives and works in Normal, Illinois. When not learning about all the Pokemon from his five-year old, he is one half of the comedy etymology podcast Words for Dinner. His work has appeared in Big Muddy, Naugatuck River Review, Apex Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others.
Anthony Varallo is the author of a novel, The Lines, as well as four short story collections. He is a professor of English at the College of Charleston, in Charleston, SC, where he is also the fiction editor of Crazyhorse.