Richard Bader (Harmony) is a former a restaurant cook, whitewater rafting guide, and college communications director who now earns his living working as a writer and consultant for nonprofit organizations. He also sings in a church choir, though nowhere near as well as the characters in this story. His fiction has been published by the Burningword Literary Journal, SN Review, and National Public Radio. This is his third story for r.kv.r.y.

Digby Beaumont (Home Improvements) is an English writer. His flash fiction has appeared widely, most recently in Bartleby Snopes, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Camroc Press Review, Change Seven Magazine, Flash Frontier, Jellyfish Review, 100-Word Story, Cosmonauts Avenue and Olentangy Review. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. He made a living as a nonfiction author for many years, with numerous publications.

Paul Beckman (Higher and Harder) was one of the winners in the Queen’s Ferry 2016 Best of the Small Fictions. His stories are widely published in print and online in the following magazines amongst others: Connecticut Review, Raleigh Review, Litro, Playboy, Pank, Blue Fifth Review, Flash Frontier, Matter Press, Metazen, Pure Slush, Jellyfish Review, Thrice Fiction and Literary Orphans. Learn more at his website and blog.

Roy Bentley (Night Shelter) was born in Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of four books and several chapbooks. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Blackbird, Shenandoah, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review and elsewhere—recently, in the anthologies New Poetry from the Midwest and Every River on Earth. He has received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA (in poetry), as well as fellowships from the arts councils of Ohio and Florida. These days, he makes his home in Pataskala, Ohio.

Sue Eisenfeld (No Place Left to Hide) is the author of Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal and a contributor to The New York Times’ Disunion: A History of the Civil War. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Gettysburg Review, Potomac Review, and many other publications, and her essays have been listed among the “Notable Essays of the Year” in The Best American Essays in 2009, 2010, 2013, and 2016. She is a five-time Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a member of the faculty at the Johns Hopkins M.A. in Writing/Science Writing programs. www.sueeisenfeld.com.

Christine Fadden (Dark Feather) work appears in Hobart, Louisiana Literature, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Gulf Coast, The Louisville Review, PANK, Joyland, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2014 Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival Prize and the 2013 Blanchan Award through the Wyoming Arts Council. She lives in the Olympic Rain Shadow, beneath some trees.

Joseph Finucane (The Foot of Hamburg and South Streets, 1958) was born and raised in the Old First Ward of Buffalo. He is a retired writing teacher of thirty-nine years and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.This is his first published piece and the opening chapter of his nearly completed memoir.

Claire FitzSimmonds (The Way She Is) lives and writes in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from Asbury University in 2009 with a journalism degree. She has dabbled in blogging, but “The Way She Is” is her first published fictional piece.

Wendy Miles (Those Who Once Lived There Return) has had work anthologized and appear in places such as Arts & Letters, Memoir Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Hunger Mountain, storySouth, The MacGuffin and Alabama Literary Review. Winner of the 2014 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, semi-finalist for the 2016 and 2013 Perugia Press Prize and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she teaches writing at Randolph College in Virginia.

Glenn Erick Miller (Weightless) has had writing appear in The Citron Review, Red Earth Review, and Agave Magazine among others. He is a recent first-place winner in the Adirondack Writing Center’s annual awards and is currently writing a novel for young adults.

Tom Saunders (Somewhere Else), has published a novel Inappropriate Happiness and two collections of short stories, Brother, What Strange Place is This? and Roof Whirl Away, as well as his poetry collection To the Boy. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, appeared in many anthologies, and is an ardent photographer in the UK where he lives.

Dawn Surratt (Illustrator) attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and graduated with a degree in Studio Art. After her father unexpectedly died in a tragic accident, she found herself gravitating toward working with grieving people and earned a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Georgia. The next 20 years she worked with Hospice patients–and this very sacred, intense work became the backbone of her photography echoing strong undercurrents of transition and loss.

Alan Toltzis (Clearing Ivy) is the author of The Last Commandment and the founder of The Psalm Project, which teaches poetry to kids in middle and high school. Recent work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, The Provo Canyon Review, As It Ought to Be, Red Wolf, and Burningword Literary Journal. Find him online at alantoltzis.com.

Rebecca Spears (Breath) is a writer and instructor from Houston, Texas, author of The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press). Her work is included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Verse Daily, Image, Relief, Ars Medica, Nimrod, Borderlands, and other journals and anthologies. Currently, she writes online posts for Relief Journal and serves on the board of Mutabilis Press. Spears has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, and The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.

John Wojtowicz (Aloha to Alcohol) grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of South Jersey. He is currently employed as a social worker and takes every opportunity to combine this work with his passion for wilderness. Besides poetry, he likes bonfire, boots, beer, and bluegrass. He has been previously published in Stoneboat, Five2one, Naugatuck River Review, El Portal, and The Mom Egg.