POETS
Erin Adair-Hodges (Domestic Geography) earned a fellowship and MFA from the University of Arizona and then stopped writing poetry. After having a son, she began writing again and in 2014 received the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from the Georgia Review. She teaches at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, NM where she lives with her family.
Carol Berg’s (The Johnson Girls…) poems are forthcoming or in Sou’wester, The Journal, Spillway, Redactions, Pebble Lake Review, and elsewhere. Her most recent chapbook, Her Vena Amoris (Red Bird Chapbooks), is available and her chapbooks, Ophelia Unraveling and The Ornithologist Poems, are available from Dancing Girl Press.
Sean Thomas Dougherty (You're Good At Going Under) is the author or editor of 13 books including All You Ask for Is Longing: Poems 1994- 2014 (2014 BOA Editions) and Scything Grace (2013 Etruscan Press). Recent poems appear in North American Review and Best American Poetry 2014. He works in a pool hall in Erie, PA.
Nick Flynn (Interview) has received fellowships and awards from, among other organizations, The Guggenheim Foundation, PEN, and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and National Public Radio’s This American Life. He is currently a professor on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston, where he is in residence each spring. In 2015 he published his ninth book, My Feelings (Graywolf), a collection of poems. His work has been translated into 15 languages.
Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Interview) directs Thursdays Writing Collective. She is the editor and publisher of seven anthologies from the Collective and the coeditor with John Asfour of V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012). A book of poetry, Serpentine Loop, is forthcoming from Anvil Press in 2016.
Sean Patrick Hill (Winter Rental) is an MFA graduate of the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers and the author of Hibernaculum (Slash Pine Press, 2013) as well as Interstitial and The Imagined Field. He's received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Kentucky Arts Council, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
Jackson Holbert's (Richard Hugo…; For Katie...) work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Chiron Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, and A-Minor Magazine, among others. He is originally from Nine Mile Falls, Washington and now studies English and Creative Writing at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Jane Huffman (Mare Skull) writes from a variety of rooms in the midwest. Recent poetry has appeared in Word Riot, The Boiler, Arroyo Literary Review, Cold Mountain Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere in print and online. She is an editorial assistant for Sundress Publications and worked as the editorial assistant on the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology. She has a BA from Kalamazoo College and is beginning MFA candidacy at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in the fall of 2015.
Wale Owoade (Kano Street) is a Nigerian poet. He was finalsted for 2014 Laura Thomas Poetry Contest and won the Silver Prize at the 2015 Tony Tokunbo Fernandez International Poetry Contest. His works have been published in many literary journals including Maple Tree Literary Journal, Canada, and The Lake Poetry Journal, UK.
Saara Myrene Raappana (Self-Portrait…) is the author of the chapbook Milk Tooth, Levee, Fever, coming in 2015 from Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared in such publications as 32 Poems, Blackbird, Harvard Review Online, [PANK], Subtropics, The Gettysburg Review, and Verse Daily. She is an editor for Cellpoems, a poetry journal distributed via text message that received an Innovations in Reading Award from the National Book Foundation. Born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern China and is communications manager for Motionpoems, a poetry film production organization.
Amy Woschek Schmidt's (Plea At The Edge Of Dying; Troublesome Creek Farm) work has been published or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, The Florida Review, Ruminate, Smartish Pace, Camroc Press Review, and Calyx, among others. She has been nominated for numerous Pushcart Prizes and has been a finalist for both the Janet McCabe Poetry Prize and the Smartish Pace Beullah Rose Prize. She is also the recipient of three Arrowhead Regional Arts Grants. She homesteads in northern Minnesota where snow is a given and sun is a gift; she lives there with her husband, daughter and bloodhound.
VISUAL ARTISTS
Peter Croteau (Remnants...) was born in Boston, MA in 1988. He considers himself to be an explorer of mundane spaces, looking to transform the everyday into something otherworldly through the use of 8x10 and 4x5 view cameras. Peter received his MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and his BS in Photography from Drexel University in 2010. He currently lives and works out of Providence, RI. Learn more at petercroteau.photography.
Julie Farstad (Tending the Bunny) is an artist and Associate Professor of Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute. Born and raised in Elmira, New York, Farstad earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Notre Dame and an MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has shown her work nationally and is represented by Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City and Zg Gallery in Chicago. Learn more about Julie's work at www.juliefarstad.com.
Diego Enrique Flores (Zacatecas, Mexico; Vulture Carcass, TX) is a documentary photographer from South Texas currently based in Mexico City, Mexico. His work focuses on themes regarding ritual, loss, and conflict. He is currently working on a variety of long-term, social-documentary projects in and around Mexico. Learn more at diegoenriqueflores.com.
Tayfun Gülnar (Bird; Border; Untitled) is an artist living in Istanbul, where he is pursuing a university degree in the Fine Arts, specializing in painting. He has won awards for his work and has been featured in several exhibitions around Turkey. Learn more about his work at tayfungulnar.com.
Elizabeth Pelley (Dark Hydra; Barn) is an artist living and working in the Columbia River Gorge near Hood River, Oregon. She studied art at Hartford Art School in Connecticut and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Washington State University in Pullman. Elizabeth has received honors in juried shows throughout the Pacific Northwest and has won first prize for works in watercolor, acrylic and photo-digital collage. One of her recent pieces is on prominent display in the Mayor’s office in City Hall, Portland, Oregon. You can view recent work on her Facebook page.
Brooke Vertin (Self-Portrait; Summer Rental) is a printmaker and art professor. Her work explores issues of interior metamorphosis, our ability to change yet remain the same. The imagery in her work is greatly inspired by nature, poetry, fairytales, and medieval art. Although originally from the Midwest, Brooke is currently adjusting to life on the East Coast. You can view more of her artwork at http://www.krop.com/brookevertin/#/.