Contributors

SIONNAIN BUCKLEY is a writer and visual artist based in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Poet Lore, Strange Horizons, Wigleaf, Foglifter, and others, and it was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2024. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Ohio State University and has received fellowship support for her work from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing.

ALYX CHANDLER (she/her) is a writer from the South. She received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Fellow and taught poetry. She teaches English courses to undergraduates at National Louis University, brings poetry to Chicago Public Schools through Chicago Poetry Center as a poet-in-residence, and facilitates poetry workshops virtually for youth incarcerated in Montana. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Poetry Anthology, North American Review, EPOCH, The Greensboro Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere at alyxchandler.com.

LYN LI CHE is from Malaysia. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Sixth Finch, Los Angeles Review, the Best American Poetry blog, and others. She lives in New York City.

YUHAN CHENG works and lives between Chengdu and New York. From non-fiction to auto-fiction, they utilize photographs and film as their primary mediums. Cheng focuses on the fluidity of identity construction and investigates how the social environment mirrors self-identity.

NANDI COMER served as the second poet laureate of the state of Michigan from 2023-2025. She is the author of the chapbook American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press). Her debut poetry collection, Tapping Out (Triquarterly), won the Society of Midland Authors Award and Julie Suk Award. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Modern Ancient Brown, MASS MoCA, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. She currently serves as the 2025-2026 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and as a co-director of Detroit Lit.

JOSEPH DANTE is a writer and instructor from Florida. He received his MFA from Florida Atlantic University, where he currently teaches and helps direct the university’s writing center. His writing has previously appeared in Salamander, Permafrost, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. One of his lyric essays was selected as notable by Best American Essays 2024. He lives with his husband and three cats.

LYUDMYLA DIADCHENKO earned her PhD in Literary Theory from Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv in 2016 and is the former Vice President of the Ukrainian Writers Association. She published three books of poetry in her native Ukrainian before the 2022 Russian invasion: Fee for Access (2011), A Hen for the Turkish Man (2017), and Kedem (2021). Volumes of her poetry have appeared in English, Greek, Italian, and Romanian. Her writing has appeared in journals on five continents, and she has presented at literary festivals in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. In 2023, she received the International Ceppo Award for Peace and Poetry (Italy).

EMMA ERLBACHER (she/they) is a second year MFA candidate at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ program. She was a finalist for a Hopwood Award and has appeared in the Nashville Review. They live with their cat, Jean, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

MARIAH GESE is an artist and writer from a haunted swamp in New York. They received their MFA from Indiana University, where they were the editor in chief of Indiana Review. They like plants, math, and other scary things. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, Shenandoah, The Adroit Journal, Split Lip Magazine, The Offing, Cleaver Magazine, Lunch Ticket, and Speculative Nonfiction.

ROBIN GOW (it/fae/he & él y elle) is a Lambda Literary award-winning poet and community educator. It is the author of poetry collections and youngadult and middle-grade novels. His titles include Lanternfly August, Dear Mothman, and A Million Quiet Revolutions, earning starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and more.

UMMA HABIBA is a poet and theater activist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her debut book of poetry Ghashe Ghashe Roktoful (Bloodflowers in the Grass) was published in 2022. Umma is also a development professional and has worked with Rohingya refugees, children with special needs, and the underprivileged indigenous people in the country’s hill tracts.

HARRISON HAMM is a poet, screenwriter, and educator from Bolivar, Tennessee. His debut chapbook, If It’s Country Music You Want, won the 2025 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and will be published in 2026. Selected for Best New Poets and named a finalist for the 2025 Ruth Lilly Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, his writing appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, The Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, Foglifter, Verse Daily, and more. In 2027, he will earn an MFA in creative writing at New York University as a Goldwater Writing Workshop Fellow.

QUAMRUL HASSAN is an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation. His poems and translations have been published in AGNI, Copper Nickel, The Malahat Review, Columbia Journal, Mantis, World Literature Today, Los Angeles Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Usawa Literary Review, and Star Literature Review.

RACHAEL HERSHON grew up just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She now teaches at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she earned her MFA in creative writing. Her work has appeared in the South Carolina Review, Boulevard, and Empty House Press, and she’s been a finalist for the Dorianne Laux Prize for Poetry.

MAI-LINH HONG is a Vietnamese American refugee poet and literary scholar. Her debut collection, Continental Drift, won the Trio Award and will be published by Trio House Press in 2026. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, ANMLY, Wildness, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She cowrote and co-edited The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (University of California Press, 2021). Raised in Virginia, she now lives in California’s Central Valley, where she is an assistant professor of literature at UC Merced.

HEDIEH JAVANSHIR ILCHI was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. Ilchi received an MFA in studio art from American University and a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design. She is the recipient of the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development Individual Grant, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, VisArts Studio Fellowship, and Charm City Fellowship, amongst others, and she has attended residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Playa Summer Lake, Monson Arts and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

THOMAS KNEELAND is an author, writer, educator, scholar, and poet whose creative and academic research explores ancestry, ecological memory, and the effects of intergenerational trauma in Black, Afro-Latine, and Afro-Indigenous communities. He is deeply committed to making space for voices of those who have been historically marginalized by teaching creative writing workshops in the Indianapolis community and beyond. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in critically-acclaimed journals including Prairie Schooner, Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Rumpus, Modern Language Studies Journal, and elsewhere. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Anderson University.

ARAH KO is a writer from Hawai‘i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books, 2025) and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press, 2026). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets and is published or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Waxwing, 32 Poems, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Catch her at arahko.com.

ARI KOONTZ (they/he) is a queer trans writer and artist with an MFA from Northern Michigan University, where they also served as associate nonfiction editor for the journal Passages North. Their work has been published in Storm Cellar, BULL, Under the Gum Tree, Alien, and elsewhere. Ari currently lives where the water meets the woods and can be found at arikoontz.com or on Instagram @ari.koontz.

M.R. MANDELL is a poet based in Los Angeles. You can find her words in SWWIM, The McNeese Review, Door Is A Jar, HAD, and others. She is the author of two chapbooks, Don’t Worry About Me (Bottlecap Press) and The Last Girl (Finishing Line Press). She is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee.

CHRISTINE MARSHALL’s first book, Match, was published by Unicorn Press in 2018. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and other places. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

SUSAN LESLIE MOORE’s poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, New York Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She edited the online magazine Caffeine Destiny for 13 years and is one of the editors of the anthology Alive At The Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest, published by Ooligan Press. She is the author of That Place Where You Opened Your Hands, winner of the Juniper Prize and published by University of Massachusetts Press. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works at Literary Arts as the director of programs for writers.

LISA MOTTOLO is a neurodivergent poet living in Austin, Texas. She is the author of the poetry collection How to Monetize Despair (Unsolicited Press, 2023), and she is the founding editor at Lit Fox Books. Lisa has attended writing programs at UC Berkeley and Kenyon College, and her work has appeared in The Penn Review, Laurel Review, DIAGRAM, Santa Clara Review, Stonecoast Review, and others.

ELLEN MURRAY is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist whose work has appeared in Hidden Compass and the Tūhura Otago Museum, and on Otago Access Radio. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand, where her practice research investigates how scenographic, embodied, and dramaturgical magic(al) realist techniques might stage underrepresented aspects of the traumatic experience. Her scholarly and creative practices engage speculative forms and narrative possibilities to reimagine interior, affective experiences, including trauma and grief. All her work is dedicated to Raisin Bran and Apricot, her bicontinental cats.

SALHA OBAID is an Emirati writer. She is the winner of the Al Owais Award for Creative Writing and the Young Emiratis Prize for Creative Writing, and was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. She is the author of three short story collections and three novels.

FAITH PALERMO (she/her) is a writer from eastern Massachusetts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Offing, Puerto del Sol, Write or Die, and others. You can find her on Instagram/Twitter @faith_palermo or at her website: faithpalermo.com.

EM PALUGHI is a queer poet from South Alabama. You can find her work in Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Foglifter, the Southern Poetry Anthology: Alabama, Apricity Press, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2025 Plentitudes Poetry Prize and holds an MFA in poetry from Vanderbilt University, where she was awarded the 2024 Kathryn Sedberry Prize.

JAKE PHILLIPS is a queer poet from Rhode Island. He is a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal, an alum of the Fine Arts Works Center summer workshop, and a recipient of a 2024 Make Art Grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. His poetry is published in AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, Salt Hill, swamp pink, and elsewhere.

RACHEL PITTMAN is a PhD student at Georgia State University, where she teaches writing and serves as an assistant editor at Five Points. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Strange Horizons, Fairy Tale Review, and South Carolina Review.

ANDREW PLIMPTON is a writer living in western Massachusetts. His stories have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, Heavy Feather Review, and The Write Launch. His plays have been performed at The Tank in New York City. He is currently working on a collection of stories and a full-length play.

RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875–1926) was an Austrian poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most significant figures in German literature and one of the most important poets of the 20th century. He is best known for his major works, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, as well as his posthumously published collection of correspondence, Letters to a Young Poet.

SELENA SPIER’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades, EPOCH, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City, where she works at the nonprofit Brooklyn Poets and co-curates the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series.

IVAN SUAZO received his BFA in dramatic writing from SUNY Purchase and is now working toward an MFA in creative writing at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. He was recently named a finalist for the 2025 Swamp Pink Prize in Fiction. His work has been supported by the Kenyon Writers Workshop, is forthcoming in Epiphany and Salamander, and has appeared in The Pinch and elsewhere.

Born in Mumbai, SNEHA SUBRAMANIAN KANTA is an academician with over fifteen years of international teaching experience and resides in the Greater Toronto region. She is the author of five chapbooks. She is the 2025 Woodhaven Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her collection Hiraeth is an honouree for the Bronwen Wallace Award and was published as an e-book and audiobook in partnership with Apple Books and Penguin Random House Canada. Her multi-genre work appears in Prairie Schooner, Porter House Review, So to Speak Journal, and elsewhere. She is one of the founding editors at Parentheses Journal.

KATHLEEN DAVIS SULLIVAN is a writer and translator from New York currently based in Northwest Arkansas. She is pursuing an MFA in literary translation at the University of Arkansas and serves as the director of Arkansas Writers in the Schools.

ALEXANDRA TEAGUE is the author of the poetry collection [ominous music intensifying] (Persea, 2024) and Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir (Oregon State University Press, 2023). She is the author of three prior books of poetry and a novel, as well as co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. She is a professor of creative writing and chair of English at University of Idaho.

KAILEY TEDESCO is the author of four collections of poetry, including Lizzie, Speak (winner of the White Stag Publishing Contest, 2018). Her most recent collection, MOTHERDEVIL (White Stag Publishing, 2024), was nominated for an Elgin Award. She teaches literature and writing at Moravian University. Her poetry won both first and second prize in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association’s 2024 contest. You can find more of her work in Black Warrior Review, Electric Literature, Driftwood Press, Fairy Tale Review, and more. For further information, please visit kaileytedesco.com.

CLIFF TISDELL attended the School of Visual Arts and the Arts Student’s League. His art is drawn from various genres of painting, sculpture, cinema, literature, and illustration. His work is in private collections in the United States, Europe, and Canada. Venues include the Edward Hopper House Museum, Carnegie Hall, Eric Fischl’s America Here and Now Project, the Chautauqua Institution, Ivan Karp’s OK Harris Gallery, and the Village Voice. Recently, his work has appeared in literary journals, including Blackbird, Your Impossible Voice, and Curlew New York. Find him at clifftisdellart.com.

PADMA THORNLYRE has published 11 books of poetry, including Anxiety Quartet (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2020-21) and a book of translations, Magnetic Storms (No Reply Press, 2023), by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Diadchenko. Current projects include The Obedient Street; further translations of Lyudmyla Diadchenko; “Khoreia,” a poem-cycle re-viewing The Odyssey in the voices of women significant to his myth; WagJaw, a poetry collection; and Baubo’s Beach: an autobiography of the Unconscious, a novel-in-progress. Padma earned his BA in English from Coe College in 1981 and has managed the underground literary, performing, and visual arts project Mad Blood since the 1990s.

Originally from Mississippi, HANNAH V WARREN is a poet, translator, and scholar living between Birmingham, Alabama, and Gambier, Ohio, where she works at Kenyon College as the Kenyon Review Fellow. Along with authoring the poetry collections Hurricane Pastoral (Sundress, 2027) and Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales (Sundress, 2024), she has received support from Fulbright Germany, the PEN/Heim Translation Grant, Bread Loaf, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Warren’s writing and research often explore the intersections of gender and perceived monstrosity.

FAYE WIKNER (she/they) was born and raised in the lingonberry forests of Sweden and now resides in New Jersey with her cat. She received her MFA from William Paterson University, where she teaches intro to creative writing. She is the associate editor of Map Literary and reads prose for The Adroit Journal, and her work has been published in CRAFT Literary, The Colored Lens, Short Beasts, and elsewhere. She was the runner-up for Feign’s 2025 Reign Prize.