David Alasdair (The West Elm Sofa) earned an MFA from Eastern Washington University in Spokane, WA, has seen the Loch Ness Monster, been in the world’s longest chorus line, and occasionally makes Shrek-like noises with his right ear.
Mia Avramut (Illustrator) is a Romanian-American writer, artist, and physician, who worked in laboratories and autopsy rooms from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. Her artwork has recently appeared or is upcoming in Prick of the Spindle, saltfront, The Knicknackery, The Bookends Review Best of 2014 Anthology (cover), Up the Staircase Quarterly, Buffalo Almanack, and Sliver of Stone. She lives in Essen, Germany.
Roy Bentley (Walking on the Effing Moon) has received fellowships from the NEA, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Pleiades, Blackbird, North American Review, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Books include Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama, 1986), Any One Man (Bottom Dog, 1992), The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine, 2006), and Starlight Taxi (Lynx House 2013). He has taught creative writing throughout the Midwest and south Florida. These days, he teaches at Georgian Court University and lives in Lakewood, New Jersey with his wife Gloria.
B.J. Best (At Goodwill) is the author of three books of poetry: But Our Princess Is in Another Castle (Rose Metal Press, 2013), Birds of Wisconsin (New Rivers Press, 2010), and State Sonnets (sunnyoutside, 2009). I got off the train at Ash Lake, a verse novella, is forthcoming from sunnyoutside. He lives in Wisconsin.
Shaula Evans (Fred) is a writer, editor and translator. Born and raised in Canada, and educated in Montreal, France, and Japan, she currently resides in New Mexico after spending 6 ½ years traveling around North America in a Mini Cooper. You can find her online at shaulaevans.com and on Twitter at @ShaulaEvans.
Robert Fieseler (New Miserable Experience) grew up in Chicago and graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School. He is the proud older brother of William (Billy) Fieseler, who also appears in this essay. Robert’s journalism has appeared in Narratively and The Big Roundtable; W.W. Norton will be publishing his debut book of nonfiction. Tweet him @wordbobby
Avital Gad-Cykman (Fulfillment) published a flash collection LIFE IN, LIFE OUT with Matter Press in 2014. Her stories have been published in The Literary Review, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Prism International, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. They have also been featured in anthologies such as W.W. Norton’s International Flash Anthology, Sex for America, Politically Inspired Fiction, Stumbling and Raging, Politically Inspired Fiction Anthology, The Flash, and The Best of Gigantic. She won the Margaret Atwood Society Magazine Prize, placed first in The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, and was a finalist for the Iowa Fiction Award for story collections. She lives in Brazil.
Ting Gou (Excavation: Mobile Alabama, 1996) lives and writes in Ann Arbor, where she is a student at the University of Michigan Medical School. Her poems have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Best of the Net 2014, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere.
Beverly Lucey (Good Will) has had work appear in Zoetrope All Story Extra, Vestal Review, Absinthe Revival, and Feathered Flounder. She was the winner of the Fiction Contest for Estonian Public Broadcasting (2013) Print anthology: Friend. Follow. Text. #storiesFromLivingOnline (fall 2013 release) “Voice Mail for the Living” in the anthology Up, Do Flash Fiction by Women Writers, (spring 2014). Landmarks: 2015 National Flash-Fiction Day Anthology (UK)
Laura Moretz (Rules) lives in Winston-Salem, NC, with her husband, two teenage sons, two dogs, and a cat. A previous story, “Philo Goes Home,” won the Rick DeMarinis Short Fiction Prize in 2012 and was published in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, in March 2013.
Mary McCluskey (Life Saver) has had prizewinning short stories published in The Atlantic, The London Magazine, StoryQuarterly, London’s Litro Magazine, on Salon.com, and in literary journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong. Her novel, INTRUSION, is scheduled for publication by Little A in March 2016. She divides her time between Stratford-upon-Avon, in England, and Los Angeles.
Tina Pocha (You Belong) was born and raised in Bombay, India. She is a scientist by training and a writer by avocation. She currently works as an academic in the field of language and literacy, and is a new and emerging poet with publications in Cadence Collective and Eunoia Review and more publications forthcoming in Hyacinth Press and East Jasmine Review. You can find more of her writing at www.tinapocha.com
Heidi Siegrist (Out of the Nest) is currently trying to make it/fake it in Chicago. She is also an MFA student at the University of the South, and is working on a collection of essays about entanglement (whatever that is).
Jennifer Williams (Europa Hides an Ocean) is a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA Program. Prior to writing, she worked as an engineer in Phoenix. Her short story “Gore Junkies” appeared in the Oregon anthology, The Night, and the Rain, and the River and she lives in Portland, Oregon.
K.A. Wisniewwski (A Taste of Peppermint) is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, the Managing Editor of Roving Eye Press, and an editor at Calypso Editions. His creative work has most recently appeared in Toad Suck, the Tule Review, Third Wednesday, the Chiron Review, Genre, the Sierra Nevada Review, and basalt. He lives in Baltimore.