Karen Bell (Illustrator) received her MFA in Photography from RISD.  Her photographs and artist books have been exhibited widely including: The Brooklyn Museum, Rosenberg & Kaufman Fine Arts, Ellis Island Immigration Museum, White Columns, NYC; The Alliance Gallery, Narrowsburg, NY; Phillips Exeter Academy, NH.  Public and private collections include Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library, Ellis Island Museum, Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.  She has received grants from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Governors Island 2011, The New School, Womens Interart Center, NYC and fellowships to Yaddo; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Karen teaches at The New School and The Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City.

Toby Van Bryce (Just Enough Hope) attends the University of San Francisco’s MFA Creative Writing Program. His work has appeared in Knock Magazine.

Danielle Collins (Spelunking) originally hails from Virginia, but has lived in Northern California since 1994.  (Little of her Southern accent remains but every now and then she will gleefully say “y’all.”)  Previously, she practiced Africanized beekeeping in Paraguay.  She also earned an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan, and enjoyed a past career as a fundraiser for nonprofits.  Today, she is pursuing her writing and photography, and lives with her fiancé, Pete, and her wild dog, Boo.

Mickey J. Corrigan (Sleight of Hand) publishes pulpy fiction with presses with names like Breathless, Champagne and Bottom Drawer. Her most recent novella is the spoofy romantic comedy F*ck Normal. A coming of age novel is due out later this year. Poetry and short fiction have appeared in literary journals. Visit at www.mickeyjcorrigan.com or on Goodreads.

Karin C. Davidson (Roadside Flowers) has had stories have appear in The Los Angeles Review, Passages North, Post Road, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Lesley University, Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, and awards including the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction, the Waasmode Short Fiction Prize, and the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted in several writing competitions, including the Jaimy Gordon Fiction Prize, the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition, and the UK Bridport Prize. A chapbook of her story collection was a finalist in the 2012 Iron Horse Literary Review Single Author Competition. Originally from the Gulf Coast, she also writes at karincdavidson.com.

Bill Glose (Age of Consent) is a former paratrooper, Gulf War veteran, and author of the poetry collections Half a Man (FutureCycle Press, 2013) and The Human Touch (San Francisco Bay Press, 2007). In 2011, he was named the Daily Press Poet Laureate. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Narrative Magazine, Chiron Review, and Poet Lore. Now a full-time writer, he undertakes intriguing pursuits—such as walking across Virginia and participating in a world-record-setting skinny dip event—and writes about them for magazines. His website (www.BillGlose.com) includes a page of helpful information for writers.

Jessica Handler (Tips for Writing About Loss) is the author of two books of non-fiction, Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss and the memoir Invisible Sisters. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and her essays and features have appeared on NPR, in Tin House, Drunken Boat, Full Grown People, Brevity, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and More Magazine. Jessica lives in Atlanta, but frequently travels to teach workshops and give readings. She is techsavvy—tweeting @jessicahandler and ready to Skype with book groups, bloggers and journalists. Learn more at JessicaHandler.com.

Jessie Hennen (Squandering the Fellowship) recently received her MFA in fiction (and other subjects) from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Before her time at Iowa, she worked in Munich, Germany, first as a nanny and then as a marketing project manager. Her work has or will appear on The Millions.com, in Untoward Magazine, Fiction365 and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is currently at work on “Flight”, her first novel. (Photo credit: Kristina Martino)

David Jauss (The Stars at Noon) is the author of the short story collections Glossolalia, Black Maps and  Crimes of Passion, and two collections of poems, You Are Not Here and Improvising Rivers, as well as a collection of essays, On Writing Fiction. His short stories have been published in numerous magazines and reprinted in such anthologies as Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards: Prize Stories, and, twice in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship, three fellowships from the Arkansas Arts Council, and one from the Minnesota State Arts Board. His collection Black Maps received the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. He teaches creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Evelyne Lampart (Reassurance) lived to become a clinical social worker and had clients in hospitals where she was a patient at one time. After 20 years in the field, she happily retired, and now runs an art workshop in the mental health clinic that served to help her heal so many years ago. Her life has turned one hundred and eighty degrees more than once.

Michael McGlade (You Don’t Know Me) grew up in an Irish farmhouse where the leaky roof didn’t bother him as much as the fear of electrocution from the nightly scramble for prime position beneath the chicken lamp, the only source of heating in the house – a large infrared heat lamp more commonly used for poultry. He has had 36 short stories appear in Green Door, J Journal, Ambit, Grain, Downstate Story, and other journals. He holds a master’s degree in English from Queen’s University, Ireland. You can find out the latest news and views from him on McGladeWriting.com.

Mark McKain (To His Wife) has had work appear in The New Republic, Agni, Subtropics, Cimarron Review, The Journal, American Letters & Commentary, Cortland Review and elsewhere. He was recently awarded a Writing Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The Center for Book Arts published a limited edition Broadside of his poem “Wild Coffee,” and he is also the author of the chapbook “Ranging the Moon.” He teaches screenwriting at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.

Vyshali Manivannan (I Am Always in Transition When Disaster Strikes) is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Studies at Rutgers University. She has published and presented scholarship on comics and animation, Internet subcultures, and the value of transgression, most recently in Fibreculture. Her first novel Invictus was published in 2004, and she has also published work in Black Clock, theNewerYork, Consequence, and DIAGRAM.

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Recovery) is a poet, writer and literary scholar. Her first poetry book,Tongue Tied Woman, won the Edda Poetry Chapbook Competition for Women in 2002 and her second poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press, 2009), won the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry, the 2010 Western Heritage Award for Poetry from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and the 2010 WILLA Award for Poetry from Women Writing the West. Mish has published poetry in The Fiddleback, Naugatuck River Review, Concho River Review, Poetry Bay, Blast Furnace, and others. She is also the editor of Mongrel Empire Press and Director of The Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University. www.tonguetiedwoman.com

Leslie L. Nielsen (Breathing Without Air), originally from Ohio, immigrated to Denmark in 2013 where she continues editorial work for Poets’ Quarterly and River Teeth Journal. Her poems have appeared in journals such as r.kv.r.y., The Missing Slate and Literary Mama.  She holds an MA in English Literature from The Ohio State University and an MFA in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University. She teaches writing, leads workshops in creativity, and occasionally blogs.

Jillian Ross (Starry Night) earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University in 2013. Her work has appeared in Dappled Things, The Noctua Review, Dogwood, The Penwood Review, Extracts, Poetry Quarterly, Mason’s Road, Weston Magazine, The Country Capitalist, Fairfield County Life, and Connecticut Gardener. Jillian lives in Connecticut with FaxMachine and CopyCat, mirror-image tuxedo cats who are fascinated by the working sounds of technology.

Lauren Jo Sypniewski (Minnows) Lauren Jo Sypniewski grew up in woodsy and earthy Northern Michigan before moving to Boston to obtain her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught writing. Since then, she’s wound around the world searching Australia for new words, new moments. Her essays and poetry have appeared in The American Council for Polish Cultural Heritage, Discovering Arguments, and the Pine River Anthology.