Winter/Spring 2015

Jennifer Blair’s work is published in New South, the James Dickey Review, South Carolina Review, Tusculum Review, Cold Mountain Review, Tulane Review, Copper Nickel, Berkeley Poetry Review, Pembroke magazine, and Superstition Review among others. Her chapbook ‘The Sheep Stealer’ is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press. She lives in Winterville, GA.

Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams received the 2013 Whiting Writers Award for her novella The Man Who Danced with Dolls. Her memoir-in-progress The Following Sea has also received a Rona Jaffe National Literary Award and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. Her work has most recently appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Oxford American,Carolina Quarterly, and Mayday Magazine, among others. Abrams currently teaches in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Darren C. Demaree’s poems have appeared and are forthcoming in numerous journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Grist, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of As We Refer To Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2015, 8th House). Demaree is Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

James Lough‘s book This Ain’t No Holiday Inn: Down and Out in New York’s Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 (Schaffner Press, 2013) is in negotiation for the screen. He’s published two other books, Sites of Insight (University Press of Colorado, 2003) winner of the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities Publications Prize, and Spheres of Awareness. A book of contemporary aphorisms he edited with Alex Stein, Short Flights, is forthcoming from Schaffner Press in 2015.He has written over 80 articles, essays, and short stories. He teaches nonfiction writing for the Savannah College of Art and Design’s writing department, which he formerly directed.

Margaret Luongo’s first collection of short stories, If the Heart is Lean, was published by LSU Press in fall 2008. She is currently working on a new collection, tentatively titled Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her work appears in numerous journals, most recently in The Cincinnati Review, Granta, New South, and others.

Jesse Milner‘s poetry and nonfiction have appeared widely in literary magazines such as Willow Springs, Gulf Stream, and Third Coast. He is a past recipient of an AWP Intro Award for Poetry and his first chapbook, The Drowned Boys, was published by March Street Press. His work has appeared most recently in Sukoon, Gravel Magazine, and The Florida Review. He teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Fort Myers with his wife, Lyn, and dog, Henry Brown.

A native of North Carolina, Kat Meads has received an NEA in poetry and writing residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Blackbird, Drunken Boat, Rattle, Gargoyle and The Southern Poetry Anthology: North Carolina (Texas Review Press). She teaches in Oklahoma City University’s low-residency MFA program.

Chris Mink is currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University. His work has appeared in The Greensboro Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Harpur Palate, and Anti-, among others.

Phong Nguyen is the author of two story collections, Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (Queen’s Ferry Press 2014) andMemory Sickness (Winner, Elixir Press, 2011). His work appears in many journals, including The Iowa Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Mississippi Review, Agni, and many others. He is editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing and Reviews, and teaches fiction-writing and literature at the University of Central Missouri.

Jason Ockert is the author of Wasp Box, his debut novel, and two collections of short stories: Neighbors of Nothing and Rabbit Punches. Winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Contest, Jason has also been honored by the Atlantic Monthly, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. His work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including New Stories from the South, Best American Mystery Stories, Oxford American, The Iowa Review, One Story, and McSweeney’s. He teaches writing at Coastal Carolina University.

Nina Romano earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She authored a short story collection, The Other Side of the Gates,and four poetry collections and two chapbooks: Cooking Lessons, Coffeehouse Meditations, She Wouldn’t Sing at My Wedding, Faraway Confections, Prayer in a Summer of Grace, and Time’s Mirrored Illusion. Romano has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She co-authored Writing in a Changing World. Romano’s Wayfarer Trilogy is forthcoming from Turner Publishing. Her first novel of the saga: The Secret Language of Women will be published in September 2015. More about the author at: www.ninaromano.com

Stephen Reilly’s poems appeared in various publications, including Main Street Rag, Broad River River Review, Cape Rock, Poetry South, and others. He is a staff writer for the Englewood Sun.

Maryanne Stahl is the author of two novels, The Opposite Shore and Forgive the Moon, published by New American Library, as well as a chapbook of poetry and flash fiction, Electric Urgency, published by Pudding House Press. She has tended ducks, herded cats and photographed dolls. She teaches American Lit and Creative Writing at Savannah Arts Academy and lives in Thunderbolt, Georgia.

Wendy Thornton is a freelance writer and editor who has been published in Riverteeth, Epiphany, MacGuffin and many other literary journals and books. Her memoir, Dear Oprah Or How I Beat Cancer and Learned to Love Daytime TV, Amazon, was published in July 2013. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has been Editor’s Pick on Salon.com multiple times. Her work is published in England, Scotland, Australia and India.

James Valvis is the author of How To Say Goodbye (Aortic Books, 2011). His poems or stories have appeared in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Natural Bridge, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Sun, and many others. His poetry has been featured in Verse Daily. His fiction was chosen for the 2013 Sundress Best of the Net. In 2014 he was awarded a King County 4Culture Grant for the Arts. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.

Robert Vivian is the author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning (Bison Books 2005) and The Least Cricket Of Evening (Bison Books, 2011). He’s currently at work on a collection of dervish essays.