Genevieve Betts’ poems and flash fiction pieces appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, OVS Magazine, The 33rd Anthology, Quarter After Eight, Nano Fiction, 42opus, CHAIN, and MATTER, and her book reviews of poetry can be found in Western American Literature, Midwest Quarterly, and 42opus.  Her manuscript, The Deafening, was a finalist for the 2007 ABZ First Book Award.  She received her MFA from Arizona State University, and she currently teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Peter Bergquist earned a B.A. in English from Princeton University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. He is currently teaching English in the Los Angeles Unified School District. His poems have been published in The New Verse News, The Sylvan Echo, The Two Hawks Quarterly, The Queen City Review, A Handful of Dust and The Broad River Review among others. His poem “Gristle on the Bone” was a finalist for the latter journal’s Rash Awards.

John F. Buckley and Martin Ott, raised in Michigan but now living in Southern California, began their ongoing games of poetic volleyball in the spring of 2009. Poetry from their previous collaboration Poets’ Guide to America, published by Brooklyn Arts Press in Summer 2012, has been accepted by more than forty publications, including Confrontation, Evergreen Review, Glint, Grey Sparrow Press, Limestone and ZYZZYVA. They are now working on a second volume of collaborative poems, The Yankee Broadcast Network.

Tara Shea Burke completed her MFA at Old Dominion University in May 2012. She is a poetry editor for Barely South Review, teaches freshman literature and composition, and has an essay in the forthcoming book, Loving the L Word: The Complete Series in Focus. Her poem “I Know Nothing” was published in the fifth issue of The Quotable and this is her second poetry acceptance. She lives with her girlfriend and their three dogs in Chesapeake, Virginia.

Lucian Childs is a writer and graphic designer living in Anchorage, Alaska. He blogs on fiction for the 49 Writers Alaska Writing Center and is a coordinator of their reading series. His work has appeared in Compass Rose and Quiddity.

William Lusk Coppage completed his MFA in poetry from McNeese State University after serving in the United States Air Force. He now teaches English in Wilmington, North Carolina at Cape Fear Community College. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, The Greensboro Review, and Cream City Review.

Shannon Cummings is a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She specializes in children’s literature. Her doctoral work involves the rhetoric of “Monster Theory” within children’s Gothic literature.

Darren C. Demaree is living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and daughter.  He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, and his first full collection, tentatively entitled "As We Refer To Our Bodies" will be published by 8th House Publishing this fall.

Cassandra Dunn received her MFA in creative writing from Mills College. She was a semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. Her stories have appeared in All Things Girl, Midwest Literary Magazine's Bearing North, Read Short Fiction, Literary House Review, The MacGuffin, 322 Review, Fix it Broken, and Clapboard House. Her website is cassandradunn.com.

Phyllis Green studied Creative Writing with Lawrence Hart at the College of Marin and stage and screenplay writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a graduate of Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA and the University of Pittsburgh. A Pushcart prize nominee, Phyllis Green’s stories have been published in Epiphany, Parting Gifts, Prick of the Spindle, The Blue Lake Review, Bluestem, The Sheepshead Review, Paper Darts, apt, ShatterColors, The Examined Life, Hospital Drive, The Greensilk Journal, a drama in Mason’s Road, and upcoming stories in The Cossack Review and The Chaffin Journal.

Ruth Foley lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches English for Wheaton College. Her recent work is appearing or forthcoming in Adanna, qarrtsiluni, Redheaded Stepchild, and Umbrella, among others. Her poetry has been nominated for the Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Pushcart anthologies. She also serves as Associate Poetry Editor for Cider Press Review.

Erin Holden is originally from the central Louisiana town of Pineville, an area that is a strong influence in her fiction. She has a journalism degree and is currently working on her M.A. in English with a focus on creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. While short stories are her chosen form, she also writes creative nonfiction and poetry.

Phillip Howerton is an English instructor at North Arkansas College. His photographs, reviews, poems, and essays have appeared in various journals, such as The Hurricane Review, South Carolina Review, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Red Rock Review, Big Muddy, Arkansas Review, and Elder Mountain.

M. E. Garman’s works has appeared in The Review, the SouthtownStar, Daily Kos, DuPage Democrat, Herald News, ChicagoNow and Vis a Tergo. Garman is currently illustrating two books of poetry and historical fiction.

Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee where she serves as the fiction editor for Grist: The Journal for Writers. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. She can be found online at tawnyshagreene.blogspot.com.

Lisa Lipkind Leibow is the author of Double Out and Back, a novel that takes the reader on the roller-coaster ride of infertility treatments as seen through the eyes of three women. Winner of Pitchapalooza D.C. and an Honorable Mention in John Gardner Award for Best Character Description, Lisa’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Folly, Sand Hill, Eleven Eleven, Pisgah, Sanskrit, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She is currently studying for a Masters in Writing at the Johns Hopkins University. You can learn more about Lisa and her writing at www.llleibow.com.

Cynthia Lim lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and is working on a memoir about her husband's brain injury. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Legendary, Hawai'i Pacific Review and RiverSedge. In addition to writing and caregiving, she crunches numbers for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Fred McGavran is a graduate of Kenyon College and Harvard Law School, and served as an officer in the Navy in Vietnam. He practiced law as a litigation partner with Frost Brown Todd LLC in Cincinnati, Ohio, defending psychiatric malpractice cases and litigating business cases. In June 2010, he was ordained a deacon in The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio, where he serves as Assistant Chaplain at Episcopal Retirement Homes. Black Lawrence Press published The Butterfly Collector, his award winning collection of short stories in December 2009. For more information, please go to www.fredmcgavran.com.

Keith Meatto is a writer, editor, and teacher based in New York. His fiction publications include Artifice, Harpur Palate, and Opium. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Forward, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere. He is the editor-in-chief of Frontier Psychiatrist (www.frontpsych.com), a journal of music, literature, and pop culture. A Yale College graduate with an MFA from the New School, he teaches writing at LIM College and Marymount Manhattan College.

Cindy Hunter Morgan’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Tar River Poetry, Bateau, Sugar House Review, Weave, The Christian Science Monitor, A cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. In 2010 and again in 2011, her chapbook manuscript, "The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker," was a finalist in the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. She has worked as a reporter, a gardener, a writer, and a bookseller. For ten years, she worked in the orchestra field, directing publicity for the Grand Rapids Symphony and, later, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.

Stella Nesanovich, a native of New Orleans, is the author of A Brightness That Made My Soul Tremble: Poems on the Life of Hildegard of Bingen (Blue Heron Press, 1996) and Vespers at Mount Angel: Poems (Xavier Review Press, 2004).  Her chapbook of poems, My Mother’s Breath, will appear in Spring 2012 from Chicory Bloom Press.  Her poetry has appeared in many journals and magazines as well as several anthologies, including Uncommonplace: An Anthology of Contemporary Louisiana Poets from LSU Press, Hurricane Blues: Poems About Katrina and Rita from Southwest Missouri State University Press, and, most recently, Shadow and Light: A Literary Anthology on Memory (The Monadnock Writers Group of New Hampshire) and The Southern Poetry Anthology IV: Louisiana, published by Texas Review Press. In 1999 she received an artist fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts; in 2009 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a retired Professor of English from McNeese State University. Her website is www.nesanovich.com.

Matt Schumacher has published two collections of poetry, Spilling the Moon and The Fire Diaries. Poetry editor of Phantom Drift, he recently completed a Ph.D. in English and is hard at work on a book of fantastical drinking songs, favorite maritime drinking songs of the miraculous alcoholics. He lives in Rhododendron, Oregon.

P. G. Smith taught political philosophy for thirty years and is professor emerita at CUNY. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and a J.D. in law. She has published over 100 essays and three non-fiction books with OUP. Her awards include a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard and an NAUW fellowship for research abroad. She recently completed her first novel about the merger of religion and politics in the 1970s.

Melanie Sweeney is an MFA candidate at New Mexico State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Reunion: The Dallas Review, Sam Houston State Review, Blue Lake Review, and Foundling Review. 

Kevin Thomason is from Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from the University of Memphis in 2008 with degrees in English and History and from McNeese State University in 2012 with an MFA in Creative Writing.

Devin Walsh has an MFA in Playwriting from Adelphi University. His short stories have appeared in The Splinter Generation, Swamp, Superstition Review, Switchback, Armageddon Buffet and VerbSap. His plays have been performed in New York and San Francisco. His poems have been published by Edifice Wrecked and Pindledyboz. He is the founder of metabolism, the literary journal of the University of North Carolina-Asheville, where he lives and works with his wife and three cats. 

Omar ZahZah was assured by a soothsayer that he would die penniless and in total obscurity when he had reached his thirteenth year. Affecting a stubborn resistance to the inevitable of practically Oedipal proportions, he continues to craft his haunted, haunting pieces, and carries his unique brand of Eerie Elegance with him wherever he goes. His work has appeared in such publications as Vulcan: a literary dis-allusion, receptacle, and RipRap. His graphic story, Death Went Into The Place,was featured in Narrative. Love (or loathe) more of his work at www.omarzahzah.com.