POETS
Andrés Cerpa (At The Castle...) is the author of Elegy with a Bicycle in a Ransacked City, forthcoming from Alice James Books (January 2019). A recipient a fellowship from the McDowell Colony, Canto Mundo, and a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Cider Press Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, Devil's Lake, Perigee, RHINO, and West Branch.
Dante Di Stefano (And Why...) is the author of Love is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Brilliant Corners, The Los Angeles Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is the poetry editor for DIALOGIST, the poetry book review editor for Arcadia, and a correspondent for The Best American Poetry Blog.
Tresha Faye Haefner's (So Much Wine...) work appears in journals such as BloodLotus, Hunger Mountain, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and others. She is the recipient of the 2012 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize from The Cincinnati Review and author of the chapbook, Take This Longing, from Finishing Line Press. She is founder of The Poetry Salon, an ongoing slate of intimate workshops for advanced poets – details at www.thepoetrysalon.com.
Emma Hine's (Spring Break at Port Aransas) work has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Missouri Review, and Ninth Letter, among others. She holds an MFA from New York University and works at the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Brooklyn.
Virginia Konchan (Deer, Fugue) is the author of a collection of poetry, The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, including That Tree is Mine (dancing girl press, 2017). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Best New Poets. Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, and Associate Editor for Tupelo Quarterly, she teaches at Marist College.
Hannah Lee Jones' (Outside of Hamelin) poetry and fiction have recently appeared in Superstition Review, Literary Orphans, DecomP, Cleaver, Apogee, LimeHawk, Cider Press Review, The Boiler, The Good Men Project, and Orion. A recent Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, she edits Primal School, a resource for poets pursuing their craft without an advanced degree, and lives on Whidbey Island in northwest Washington. You can find her at primalschool.org.
Owen McLeod's (Northeast Kingdom) poetry recently appears or is forthcoming in New England Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, Yale Review, Missouri Review, Sycamore Review, and other journals. He is a potter, a professor of philosophy at Lafayette College, and he lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Learn more at www.owenmcleodpoetry.com.
Anna Meister (Titrate) is author of the chapbook Nothing Granted (dancing girl press, 2016) and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Day One, Arkansas International, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Anna lives in Des Moines, IA and at www.anna-meister.com.
Emily Mohn-Slate's (Wake) recent poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, The Falls, was a finalist for the 2016 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize offered by University of Pittsburgh Press. She teaches creative writing at Chatham University lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Alison Pelegrin (Dump Trucks...) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Waterlines (LSU Press 2016), and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Recent work appears in The SOuthern Review, The Cincinnati Review, and Tinderbox.
Michael Schmeltzer (86) was born in Yokosuka, Japan, and eventually moved to the US. He is the author of Elegy/Elk River (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and Blood Song (Two Sylvias Press, 2016), which was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. A debut nonfiction book, A Single Throat Opens, a lyric exploration of addiction written collaboratively with Meghan McClure, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press.
Adam Tavel (Clearance Tie) is the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and Plash & Levitation (University of Alaska Press, 2015), winner of the Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry. His poem "When We Were Very Young" appeared in Issue 6 of Radar and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can find him online at adamtavel.com.
VISUAL ARTISTS
Paul Bilger (Maple Seeds) is an experimental photographer and philosopher. His work has been featured in literary journals Brevity, SmokeLong Quarterly, quarrtsiluni, Hot Metal Bridge, and Blue Mesa Review and as cover art for the musical collectives Dead Voices on Air, Autistici, and Brian. More album art can be viewed at Discogs. In 2012, he was a featured artist for Kompresja, a Polish journal of art and science. He teaches Philosophy for Penn State University and Chatham University. He lives in Pittsburgh. Learn more here.
Born in San Bernardino and raised on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Mary-Austin Klein (Pismo Dunes) found inspiration in the California landscape at an early age. The Otis Art Institute took her inland to the Echo Park district in Los Angeles, where she has been a resident for 27 years. After purchasing a Mojave Desert cabin in 2001, Klein returned to painting landscape. Her collectors, including the American artist Wayne Thiebaud, appreciate her small-scaled and highly detailed paintings. She takes numerous trips throughout the year for artistic inspiration and returns to her studio to produce new works. Mary-Austin Klein’s work has been exhibited at the Riverside Museum of Art, Oceanside Museum of Art, Bakersfield Museum of Art, and Santa Paula Art Museum. The alt-country band I See Hawks in L.A. featured a song titled "Mary-Austin Sky" on their 2012 album, A New Kind of Lonely. She is featured in artist Kim Stringfellow's book Jackrabbit Homestead, and in The Guide to the Wild Mojave, a publication sponsored by the California Wilderness Coalition. Learn more at maryaustinklein.com.
Lise Latreille (Clarendon Street) is a photographer who was born in Shawville, Quebec, Canada, in 1984. She is based in Montreal, where she's currently completing an MFA at Concordia University. Her work looks at the poetic potential of everyday spaces. See more at liselatreille.com and liselatreille.tumblr.com.
Madara Mason (Noise In The System) is a painter living and working in a studio just near the arctic circle in Fairbanks, Alaska. Her pieces are often a synthesis of elements from traditional women's work, expressive abstractions, and figurative subjects. Repetitive, iterative markings and loose, gestural forms find a way to peacefully coexist within the colorful confines of her work. Learn more at madaramason.com.
Originally from Elyria, Ohio, Shell Myers (Titrate, Me In Philly) lives and works in Philadelphia as an arts administrator and published illustrator. They blend digital and physical drawings with vibrant colors to play on themes of transformation and fantasy. Learn more at shellmyers.com.
Kate Puxley (Gancho, Mount #5, Tan #6) was born in Edmonton, Alberta and has since lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Rome and Montreal. After completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University in 2005, she extended her practice beyond the palette, and became a certified taxidermist. She specializes in large charcoal drawings, sculpture and ethical taxidermy (found animals, predominantly road kill). Puxley has apprenticed with taxidermists in Canada, the UK, Austria and Italy. In 2011, she was invited to create a diorama at The Museum of Zoology in Rome, Italy and in 2016 presented her on-going installation ‘Trans-Canada’ at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Ontario. She recently completed her MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University, Montreal.
Tema Stauffer (Yellow House...) is a photographer whose work examines the social, economic, and psychological landscape of American spaces. Her work has been exhibited at Sasha Wolf, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, and Jen Bekman galleries in New York City, as well as galleries and institutions internationally, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. In 2010, she was awarded an AOL 25 for 25 Grant for innovation in the arts for her combined work as an artist, curator, and writer. She was a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2013; she was also the recipient of the 2012 Women in Photography – LTI/Lightside Individual Project Grant and a 2014 Workspace Residency for her documentary portrait series, Paterson, depicting residents of Paterson, New Jersey during the years following the American economic crisis. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her Master’s degree in photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Stauffer is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography (LTA) at Concordia University in Montreal. Learn more at temastauffer.com.
Born into a small family, Dorian Vallejo's (On Almost Any Morning, Small Windows, Bubbles) career began in his late teens illustrating paperback book covers while attending the School of Visual Arts in New York. As the field increasingly began to incorporate the use of computer-generated images, Vallejo felt the need to pursue other avenues with his art. His love of traditional media and the figure drew him to portraiture and to focus on personal work, which he shows in galleries. These days, Vallejo spends most of his time creating paintings and drawings for sale through galleries and privately. Learn more at DorianVallejo.com.
Ashley Valmere (Fireplace In The Forest) grew up in various locations and cultures, learning to use the camera as a way to explore undiscovered places or to build her own. Inspired by the outdoors and science fiction novels, Ashley seeks to portray the world around us in a way that questions our belief in the physical truth of things as they appear to be. Learn more at ashleyvalmere.com.