Winter/Spring 2020

Ace Boggess is author of the novels States of Mercy (Alien Buddha Press, 2019) and A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea, 2016), as well as four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018). His recent fiction appears in Notre Dame Review, The Laurel Review, Lumina, and Superstition Review. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

Paul Stephen Bryant was born and raised in Florence, SC. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction Writing at Georgia College and State University. His previous work has been published in the Esthetic Apostle and in South Carolina's Best Emerging Poets 2019: An Anthology.

Auguste Budhram is a writer and art curator who currently lives and works in Austin, TX. She is a first-generation Canadian of Trinidadian-descent who emigrated to the U.S. for school. Her short fiction has been honored with finalist recognitions by Glimmer Train, New Letters’ Alexander Cappon Prize for Fiction, and Kore Press, and she has been published in Intellect Journal’s Short Fiction Theory & Practice. In 2017, she was the Jack Jones Literary Art’s Tiphanie Yanique Fellow, and in 2015 she was invited to Callaloo’s Creative Writing Workshop, in Barbados.

James Garrison is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School and practiced law until returning to his first loves: writing and reading good literature. His first novel, QL 4 (TouchPoint Press 2017), set in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, has won awards for literary and military fiction. His most recent novel, The Safecracker, a tongue-in-cheek legal thriller, was released in eBook and paperback in September 2019. His creative nonfiction works and poems have appeared in online magazines and anthologies; his poem “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry” was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart prize.

Sallie Hess is a retired viticulturist who lives in Virginia, where she is the ecosystem manager for a wild herd of animals, plants, and children. Her poetry is about those things and their (our) connections to the greater world and history. She went to Hollins College for her B.A., and the University of California at Davis for her M.S. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Constellations, and The Atlanta Review (forthcoming).

Donna Isaac is a teaching artist and poet who organizes community readings in the Twin Cities. Published work includes a poetry book, Footfalls (Pocahontas Press), a paean to American folk music and her formative years in the Appalachians; two chapbooks, Tommy (Red Dragonfly Press); Holy Comforter (Red Bird Chapbooks); and work in journals such as the Saint Paul Almanac, The Penn Review, and AvantAppal(achia). Persistence of Vision, a chapbook focused on Donna's love for movies, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, November 2019.

Martha Keller is a teacher and a writer who lives in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband and their dog. Her work has appeared in Bridge Eight, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Ink Stains, and elsewhere. She was a 2019 Pitch Wars Mentee, and she's a reader for Flash Fiction Magazine. Over the years, she's worked in strip malls, skyscrapers, and high school classrooms.

Following a 35-year career as a park ranger, outdoor recreation planner, and conservation biologist, Avis Kennedy has fulfilled a longtime dream by embarking on a second vocation as a writer.  She received a degree in Wildlife Biology from Southern Illinois University. She is the winner of the 2000 Nashville Tennessean Summer Fiction Contest and was a participant in the 2019 Chesapeake Writers Conference.  Other interests include paddling, hiking, gardening, sourdough baking, travel, and keeping up with friends and family.  Avis and her husband, David Swanger, split their time between Nashville, TN, and Anna Maria, FL

Alice Stone-Collins earned her MFA in studio art from the University of Tennessee and has exhibited her work regionally and nationally. She has been a resident artist at KMAC (Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft) based out of Louisville and the David and Julia White Artist Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. She was also a finalist for the Jean-Claude Reynal Scholarship among other honors and awards. Currently, Alice is a faculty member at Georgia Gwinnett College in Metro Atlanta where she invites others to explore and expose smaller and larger worlds of possibility.

Brooke Turner is a fiction writer whose work is featured in South 85 Journal and White Wall Review. Her short story, "Woman Friend," was a semifinalist for the 2020 Mikrokosmos Fiction Contest. In addition to fiction, her essay "The Milk Man" has appeared in the print publication, Quills & Pixels. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and is currently a Graduate Assistant in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern Mississippi where she is also the Editor and Chief of Product Magazine and Assistant Editor at Mississippi Review. She currently lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with her two cats, Sing Sing and Little Sebastian.

Catherine Vance (www.catherinevance.com) lives in Houston, Texas, where she teaches writing at the literary nonprofit Writespace and is involved in social justice advocacy and speaking.  She was born in the Appalachians and resided in the region for over 20 years. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis and was a past winner of the Dobie Paisano Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.  She is also an antiques dealer, and this piece recounts an experience that happened in the mountains of North Carolina. She is currently completing a memoir about infidelity, mental illness, marriage and divorce-- all of that. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Defunkt, Write Launch, Synkroniciti, and Talking Writing.

Michael Wade writes and lives with his wife and daughter near Hillsborough, North Carolina. His work has been published in Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, The Cabinet of Heed, formercactus, Easy Street, Dead Mule, and elsewhere. He has worked as a journalist, critic, research scientist and biopharmaceutical executive.

H.W. Walker is a writer from Memphis, TN. He currently lives in Orlando, Florida, where he is an MFA candidate and Provost Fellow at The University of Central Florida. His fiction has appeared online at Five:2:One magazine and Likely Red Press, as well as in print at Flock Lit.

James Wyshynski is a former editor of the Black Warrior Review. His poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Terminus, River Styx, Stoneboat, Interim, Nimrod, The Cortland Review, Barrow Street, Permafrost and are forthcoming in the Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and others. He currently lives and works in Marietta, Georgia.