Contributors

William L. Alton was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published one book titled Heroes of Silence. He earned his both BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he continues to live.

Will Cordeiro lives in Tucson, where he volunteers at the Poetry Center and is completing his Ph.D. at Cornell in 18th century British literature. Recent work is published or forthcoming in Copper Nickel, VERSE online, New Walk, Unsplendid, and Raintown Review.

Nikki Paley Cox has been published in Briar Cliff Review (Pushcart Prize nomination), Hanging Loose Press, After Hours, and Another Chicago Magazine, among others. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Emerson College, and taught Poetry and Composition at the University of Illinois in Chicago for almost a decade. Nikki wrote a full-length play that was featured in Chicago’s Writer’s Bloc Festival last summer, and is currently at work on a new play at Chicago Dramatists Theatre.

Meredith Doench writes and teaches in Dayton, Ohio. She has published in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and So to Speak, among others. She is also one of the fiction editors of the literary journal Camera Obscura: Journal of Literature and Photography.

Steve Drum is a writer living in Savannah, Georgia. He is earning an MFA in writing and MA in cinema studies from Savannah College of Art and Design. Drum's work has been published in the Huffington Post, the St. Sebastian Review and The Wordstock Ten. He is working on a history of Colt Studios, told from the perspective of former models.

Jennie Ehrenhalt is a graduate student in English Education at Portland State University. She currently teaches creative writing at Trillium Public Charter School, and has worked as an LGBTQ-inclusive trauma advocate, facilitated LGBTQ community workshops, and edited a digest for Seattle's Safe Schools Coalition.  This is her first publication.

Jodie Garay's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Brooklyn Review, The Saint Ann's Review, Twelfth Street Review and Mountain Record. She and her partner split their time between Brooklyn and upstate New York.

Rae Gouirand’s first collection of poetry, Open Winter, was selected by Elaine Equi for the 2011 Bellday Prize, and won a 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award for Poetry as well as the 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Columbia, The Kenyon Review: KROnline, Seneca Review, jubilat, Spinning Jenny, Bateau, Michigan Quarterly Review, and other journals, as well as two recent volumes of the Best New Poets series. A lecturer in the Department of English at UC-Davis, and Nonfiction Editor for California Northern, she is currently at work on a second collection of poems and a collection of linked essays.

Elizabeth Greenhill is a visual artist, writer, and practitioner of holistic medicine who grew up in North Carolina and then zipped off to New York for a long while until she pioneered herself to Oregon. At Vassar College she studied poetry, literature, and art and made 16mm films. At home in Portland, when she is not creating poetry or art, she works with her hands to help people feel better.

Dena Rash Guzman is a poet and editor living on a farm in the Mt. Hood Wilderness outside Portland, OR. Her work can be found online and in print in several journals and anthologies, including Thrush, Rumpus, Faster Times, Lyre Lyre, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and others. She is founding editor of the literary journal Unshod Quills, and is managing director for Shanghai, China's only independent English language press, HAL Publishing. Her first book of poetry is being released by Dog On A Chain Press in 2012. She co-produces Unchaste Readers, Portland's only all female literary series.

Molly Sutton Kiefer’s chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake won the 2010 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award. Her second chapbook, City of Bears, will be published in 2013 by dancing girl press.  Her work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, you are here, Gulf Stream, Cold Mountain Review, Southampton Review, Wicked Alice, and Permafrost, among others.  She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, is in the mentorship program at the Loft Literary Center, serves as poetry editor to Midway Journal, and runs Balancing the Tide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Project.  She currently lives in Red Wing with her husband and daughter and is expecting a son in February. She is at work on a manuscript on (in)fertility.  More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com.

Chaney Kwak's writing appears in Zyzzyva, the New York Times, 2011-2012 Best American Short Plays and The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35. He works as a correspondent for Condé Nast Daily Traveler.

Rex Leonowicz is a trans-identified intersectional feminist from New York City. He is heading to Oakland, CA to pursue his MFA in Poetry at Mills College. His work can be found in Lambda Literary's Poetry Spotlight, Bodies of Work Magazine, and Testimony, a New York-based queer art and literature exhibition and publication.

Alistair McCartney is the author of The End of the World Book: a Novel (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). TEOTWB was a finalist for the PEN USA Fiction Award 2009 and the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Debut Fiction Award 2009, and it was in Seattle Times Best Ten Books of 2008. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1971, McCartney's writing has appeared in Animal Shelter, Fence, Bloom, Lies/Isles, Crush Fanzine, 1913, James White Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. He is currently at work on the second novel in a projected six-book cycle. Based in Los Angeles, he lives with his partner Tim Miller and teaches creative writing and literature in the BA and MFA Programs at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger (Miller and Shellabarger), a husband and husband artist team, create performances, sculptures, collages, and artist books that document the rhythms of human relationships. They are a 2008 recipient of an Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Their work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Newark Public Library, and the National Gallery of Canada. Surveys of their work have been shown at the INOVA in Milwaukee, University Galleries at Illinois State University, and Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine. Western Exhibitions presented solo projects of their work at the VOLTA Show in Basel, Switzerland, NEXT Art Fair in Chicago, Illinois, and NADA Art Fair in Miami, Florida, all in 2008. Recent performances have been presented at the Time-Based Arts festival in Portland, Oregon, Hyde Park Art Center, 44/46 Performance Festival in Chicago, the Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois, the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, and the Illinois State University Galleries. Their work has been written about in Artforum.com, Art & Auction, Frieze, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Flash Art, TimeOut Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Miller and Shellabarger also maintain separate artistic practices. They live and work in Chicago, Illinois.

Anthony Moll is a Californian expatriate now living in Baltimore, Maryland. He escaped both military service and the D.C. non-profit scene to pursue an MFA at the University of Baltimore, where he also teaches. His work was most recently featured in Seltzer, and he is a regular contributor to Gay Life magazine.

Cynthia Neely is the 2011 winner of the Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry chapbook by Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Her poems have appeared in, among others, Bellevue Literary Review (Honorable Mention for the 2011 Marica and Poetry Prize), Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review and Raven Chronicles, as well as several anthologies. She is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Pacific University.

Jason Oet (video) is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Metamorphosis (Kattywompus Press) and Peeling the Apple (NightBallet Press, Fall 2012). Jacob's poetry appears in Cream City Review, Sugar House Review, So to Speak, 580 Split, and Yemassee, among others. His awards include the 2011 Younkin-Rivera Poetry Prize and the 2011 Ohioana Robert Fox Award.

David Pickering is a native of the North Oregon Coast, where he lived until 2006 when he moved over the mountain to Portland. His work has been published in the Sunday Oregonian, Portland Review, Gertrude, and in the anthology, Salt: A Collection of Poetry on the Oregon Coast. David makes his living as a Human Resources Director. He writes on weekend mornings, usually at Soundgrounds Coffee Shop on Belmont Street where he huddles over his laptop and stares down unruly children. David lives in SE Portland with his husband, Stephen.

Nicole Santalucia is currently working toward her Ph.D. in English with a concentration in poetry at Binghamton University and she is the Poetry Editor of Harpur Palate. Her work has appeared in Pax Americana, Clockhouse Review, Ragazine, the Paterson Literary Review, The Inquisitive Eater, and has a poem forthcoming in Bayou Magazine. Nicole received honorable mention awards from Astraea Lesbian Foundation Writers Fund as well as the Allen Ginsberg Award.

Sam Sax is the first ever Bay Area Unified Grand Slam Champion and Oakland’s first two-time queer Grand Slam Champion. He curates 'The New Sh!t Show', a bimonthly reading series in San Francisco and is the poetry curator for The Modern Times Bookstore. You can find more of his work, now or forthcoming, in Rattle, The Evergreen Review, Muzzle, Brusque, The Nervous Breakdown and other journals.

Vince Sgambati's short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, North American Review, and the anthology Off The Rocks (New Town Writers, Chicago). He was also a semifinalist in Nimrod Literary Awards: the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction.  His creative nonfiction has appeared in the anthology Queer and Catholic (Routledge) and the Journal of GLBT Family Studies, and his essays regarding LGBT parenting have appeared online and in print, including Lavender Magazine where he was a regular columnist.

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from his farm in Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. A Pushcart nominee, Charles is published widely in the small press. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first collection.

Jeff Tigchelaar is a homemaker based in Kansas. Recent poems appear or forthcome in or on Fugue, Pleiades, Court Green, Best New Poets 2011, Handsome, West Wind Review, Sport Literate, The 22, Juked, The Laurel Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Verse Daily. His blog, Stay-at-Home Pop Culture, is at xyztopeka.com.

David Weisberg is an MFA candidate in poetry at New School. He has served as poetry editor for Death Hums Magazine and Number 9 Magazine and is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. He lives in Brooklyn with his dog, Laura.

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess and Post Pardon. She was selected by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List. Member of the PlayGround writers’ pool, her play Frigidare was staged for the 15th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival. Recipient of the inaugural Rose O’Neill Literary House summer residency at Washington College in Maryland, Arisa has also received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has been widely published and is featured on the recording WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet. A blog editor for HER KIND, the editorial manager at Dance Studio Life magazine, Arisa’s second collection, A Penny Saved, is forthcoming from Willow Books in 2013.  

Yuvi Zalkow (video) is the creator of the I'm a Failed Writer online video series and has been rejected more than 600 times by reputable and disreputable journals. He received his MFA from Antioch University. Visit his website at yuvizalkow.com.