Kiik A.K. (lullaby) previously studied poetics at Santa Clara University and UC Davis and is a current graduate student of creative writing at UC San Diego. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the journals iO, Scythe, Washington Square, Barge Press, The Brooklyner, Alligator Juniper, CutBank and Alice Blue Review.

Christine Aletti (Two Variations on the Theme of Goodbye) has an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have been published in Two Hawks Quarterly and Tattoo Highway. Christine lives in New Jersey, where she teaches writing to unruly youths and yoga to disciplined yuppies.

Richard Bader‘s (The Tuesday Evening Meditation Group Breaks to Pee) fiction has been (or is about to be) published by the Burningword Literary Journal, SN Review, and National Public Radio. This is his second story for r.kv.ry. He lives and writes in Towson, Maryland.

Roy Bentley‘s (The World’s Last Morning) poems have appeared in the Southern Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review, The Journal, New Virginia Review, Laurel Review, Sou’wester and elsewhere.

Janet Frishberg (Benefits of Anticipatory Grief) lives and writes in a light blue room in San Francisco. She’s currently editing her first book, a memoir. You can find her work in Literary Orphans, Cease, Cows, sparkle & blink, the SF Chronicle, and soon in The Rufous City Review and Black Heart Magazine. You can find her @jfrishberg

Ann Hillesland‘s (Wunnerful, Wunnerful, Fabulous) work has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals including Fourth Genre, The Los Angeles Review, Monkeybicycle, Open City, Prick of the Spindle, and SmokeLong Quarterly, and has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2012. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Queen’s University of Charlotte.

Rasmenia Massoud (Junie the Tree) is from Colorado, but after several weird turns, she ended up somewhere in France. She is the author of the short story collections HUMAN DETRITUS and BROKEN ABROAD. Some of her other work has appeared in various anthologies and online at places like The Foundling Review, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Literary Orphans, Metazen, Full of Crow, Flash Fiction Offensive and Underground Voices. You can visit her at: http://www.rasmenia.com/

Alexa Mergen (Cells of Solitude) edits the blogs Day Poems and Yoga Stanza. Her poem “Distance,” published in Solo Novo, was a clmp Taste Test selection. Alexa’s most recent chapbook is Three Weeks Before Summer; and a full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Salmon in 2015. For a full list of published essays, poems and short stories, please visit alexamergen.com

Michelle Olney (Short Prayer) studied Creative Writing at Brandeis University, where she received the American Poets Honorary Prize (2009). She was recently hired as Poetry Editor for the speculative genre magazine Isotropic Fiction. She lives and works in Portland, ME.

Jodi Paloni (Attachments) lives and writes in the foothills of southern Vermont. Her stories appear in Green Mountains Review, Carve Magazine, The Atticus Review, Whitefish Review, upstreet, Spartan, and others. She is the 2013 winner of The Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction and placed second in the 2012 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. Jodi reviews fiction for Contrary Magazine and New Pages. She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Katie Rice (Paris in October) earned her BA in English: Creative Writing from Colgate University. She now works at Penguin Random House and lives in Brooklyn, NY.  Her poems have appeared in Black Bottom Review.

Lonette Stayton (Ghosts) is currently a MFA student at the University of Memphis. She is working on her thesis, Fractured Self–A Life in Snapshots, and plans to graduate in the spring. Her middle school students’ passion for writing inspires her every day.

Jack Troy (The Wind in the Jug) is a potter, teacher and writer who lives and works in Huntingdon, PA. He has taught over 200 workshops for potters and his work in clay has taken him to 24 countries. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Pivot, Friends Journal, Kestrel, The Studio Potter, and Common Ground. His collection of poems, Calling the Planet Home, was self-published in 2003. His website is jacktroy.net

Monica Wendel (The Lightning Continued) is the author of No Apocalypse (Georgetown Review Press, 2013) and the chapbooks Call it a Window (Midwest Writing Center, 2012) and Pioneer (forthcoming, Thrush Press). These poems were composed at the Jack Kerouac Project of Orlando, Florida, where she was the Spring 2013 writer-in-residence. Currently, Monica lives in Brooklyn and is assistant professor of composition and creative writing at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

Kevin Winchester (Like Juliet and Romeo) is a North Carolina native and author of the short story collection, Everybody’s Gotta Eat. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Tin House, Barrel House, Storysouth, and the anthology Everything But the Baby. In 2005, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference awarded Kevin their Work Study Scholarship. He is currently the Director of the Writing Center at Wingate University where he also teaches Creative Writing. Winchester recently won the 2013 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Award.

Fran Wolf (Meditations on my Brother’s Winter Coat) writes stories she’s learned from living life as a paralegal, waitress, library aide, community organizer, phone solicitor for charities, and all too many other jobs. “Meditations on My Brother’s Winter Coat” is her first published story. You can reach her at: franwolf1117@gmail.com