FISAYO ADEYEYE is currently an MFA candidate at SFSU. He has had works published by Little River, Potluck Magazine, and Have U Seen My Whale.
BRANDON JORDAN BROWN was born in Birmingham, Alabama and raised in the South. He is a former PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow in poetry, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his work has been published or is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio; Day One; decomP; Rufous City Review; Cultural Weekly and more. Brandon lives in Los Angeles, where he is working on his first book.
HOLLIE CHASTAIN is an artist living and working in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following studies in both fine art and business she spent several years in marketing and design before taking the leap in 2009 to launch a career as an artist and illustrator. Hollie works mainly with paper, mixing vintage and found images with modern colors and compositions to create work full of originality and narrative. As well as various publications you can see her work in galleries and art boutiques both in the US and abroad.
S. BROOK CORFMAN is a poet who writes plays, living in a turret in Pittsburgh. Other work from "Luxury, Blue Lace" has appeared in Washington Square and is forthcoming in The Journal, The Spectacle, The Hawai'i Review, and Twelfth House.
jayy dodd is a blxk question mark from los angeles, california– now based on the internet. they are a professional writer & literary editor. their work has appeared / will appear in Lambda Literary, The Establishment, Assaracus, Winter Tangerine, Dreginald, & Guernica among others. they’re the author of [sugar in the tank] on Pizza Pi Press. their debut collection Mannish Tongues will be be released in 2017 on Platypus Press. they are a 2017 Pushcart Prize Nominee. find them talking trash or taking a selfie.
SHEILA DONG is a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. They are double-majoring in Creative Writing and Psychology. Their work has appeared in Words Dance, Scribendi, and Collision Literary Magazine. Besides writing, Sheila enjoys dancing, cooking, using singular third-person gender-neutral pronouns, and collecting stories about people who have died unusual deaths.
CHARLOTTE EVANS (b. 1981, UK) studied fine art at Byam Shaw School of Art (now part of Central St. Martins) in London. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has shown extensively in the UK and at International art fairs and more recently, in New York in both solo and group shows. Her work is held in public and private collections around the globe including that of the UBS bank and the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection in the UK.'
DANA FANG is a senior Creative Writing and English Literature Major at Oberlin College. Her prose has been published in the Susquehanna Review, The Plum Creek Review. Her poetry has been featured online at the Voices Project and The Wilder Voice.
OLIVIA GATWOOD is full-time writer, performer and sex and relationships columnist based in New York. Hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has been featured on HBO and Verses and Flow and is a recent graduate of Pratt Institute's fiction program. Olivia is co-founder of the feminist poetry show SPEAK LIKE A GIRL and is currently on a nationwide tour until infinity.
HENRY HOKE wrote The Book of Endless Sleepovers ( Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and Genevieves (winner of the 2015 Subito Press prose contest). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, Electric Literature, Tierra Adentro and PANK. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal in Los Angeles.
ELENA JACKENDOFF is a recent graduate of Oberlin College, where she studied creative writing and politics.
STEPHANIE LEONE studied Fiction Writing and Poetry and Lang and Communication Design at Parsons. She has an unhealthy obsession with well-designed books, shoes, and Patti Smith. She hopes New York City will love her forever.
ELISE MAHAN creates paintings that are inspired by her love for astronomy, natural history, and her work as an early childhood educator. She uses a range of materials such as gouache, watercolor, gouache, graphite, walnut ink and metallic pigments in her work. Each painting is a chance for her to draw upon ethereal and surreal elements that utilize and explore texture, color and botanical elements that exist within the natural world. Elise aims to explore the connections between natural history and symbolism and how they relate to one another within art and within society.
MARY MAROSTE is a sophomore at Western Michigan University. She is duel majoring in creative writing and communication studies. She enjoys working closely with peers on her work and one day hopes to teach poetry on a college level. She has been previously published in the Laureate and is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, 30 North, and Mochila Review. She is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan but currently resides in Kalamazoo.
RANIA MATAR was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. Originally trained as an architect at the American University of Beirut and at Cornell University, she studied photography at the New England School of Photography and the Maine Photographic Workshops. Matar's work focuses on girls and women. She started teaching photography in 2009 and offered summer photography workshops to teenage girls in Lebanon's refugee camps with the assistance of non-governmental organizations. She has published three books.
JONATHAN MAY grew up in Zimbabwe as the child of missionaries. He lives and teaches in Memphis, TN. His work has appeared in [PANK], Superstition Review, Plots With Guns, Shark Reef, Duende, One, and Rock & Sling. He’s recently finished translating the play "Dreams" by Günter Eich into English.
KATHRYN MERWIN is a native of Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the minnesota review, Permafrost Magazine, Folio, apt, Notre Dame Review, and Jabberwock Review, among others. In 2015, she was awarded the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize for Poetry and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Milk Journal and Managing Editor of The Scarab.
KNOMIA MONIKA is a protector of Mother Earth and her children. A Visionary, Alive and Kicking with her Family on the Front Range.
JAMILA OSMAN is a Somali writer and educator living in Portland, Oregon. She teaches high school English and facilitates poetry workshops for incarcerated youth. Her writing explores the tension between place and history, the mythology of home, and the intersection of community, culture, and womanhood. Her work has previously appeared in The Toast, Boaat Press, The Establishment, and Araweelo Abroad. She is a VONA/Voices of Our Nation alum.
JENNIFER SCHIFANO is a graduate of Eastern University and Fairfield University, where she received her MFA in fiction. Jennifer is the 2011 recipient of the Dorothy McCollum Seibert Award for social justice in creative writing and has been published in Mason’s Road Literary Journal, riverSedge: A Journal of Art of Literature, and Whirlwind Magazine. She lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches, translates, runs marathons, and writes.
BO SCHWABACHER is an adopted Korean-American. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in CutBank, diode, Redivider, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She teaches at Northern Arizona University.
JD SCOTT is the author of Night Errands (Winner of the Peter Meinke Prize for Poetry—YellowJacket Press, 2012) and FUNERALS & THRONES (Birds of Lace Press, 2013). Recent and forthcoming publications include Best American Experimental Writing 2015, Salt Hill, The Pinch, The Atlas Review, Apogee, SPECS, LEVELER, Adult, and Powder Keg. JD has also contributed to the Poetry Foundation's blog, HARRIET, and is the design editor for Black Warrior Review.
Before moving into America, CHIN H. SHIN accumulated profound experience and knowledge in oil painting and watercolor in South Korea, and he continued to study abstract painting for years for his Master’s degree in Long Island University. He has been an active artist for the last 10 years and has shown paintings with various art galleries. Chin H has been concentrating on New York cityscapes for the last 3 years after becoming inspired by the streets of Manhattan. Technique-wise, he has been influenced by Korean calligraphy and the wild brush strokes of Expressionism.
BRAD TRUMPFHELLER is a poet and writer from nowhere. Their work has appeared in the Nashville Review, Assaracus, Red Paint Hill, and elsewhere. They are an undergraduate student at Emerson College, where they study literature and music.
KELLY TUNSTALL received her BA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 2002. Working in acrylic, collage, spray paint, pencil, pen and ink, gold leaf and some secret sauce, her experimental, yet classically grounded works live somewhat comfortably in a space between graphic expression, stylized representation, surrealism, and sketch.
EDWIN USHIRO is an artist from Hawaii who is currently residing in Southern California. His work captures the essence of Hawaii, youth, and nostalgia in a technique that's uniquely his own. After earning a BFA with Honors in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, he worked in the entertainment industry as a storyboard artist, concept designer and visual consultant. More recently, Ushiro has exhibited in venues worldwide, including Villa Bottini in Italy, the Museum of Kyoto, the Portsmouth Museum of Art, the Japanese American National Museum and the Vincent Price Art Museum.
JEFF WHITNEY is the author of three chapbooks. The Tree With Lights In It is available from Thrush Press, while Radio Silence (Black Lawrence Press) and Smoke Tones (Phantom Books) were co-written with poet Philip Schaefer. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland, where he teaches English.
art by Hollie Chastain