Winter/Spring 2018

David-Matthew Barnes is the award-winning author of several novels and collections of stage plays and poetry. His acclaimed screenplays have earned many accolades including a 2017 Los Angeles Film Award. David-Matthew has written over fifty stage plays that have been performed in three languages in ten countries. His literary work has appeared in over one hundred publications, including The Comstock Review, The Magnolia Review, Memoryhouse, New Plains Review, The Southeast Review, and more. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He has been an educator for more than a decade.

John Belk is an Assistant Professor of English and Writing Program Director at Southern Utah University.  He holds an MFA in Poetry and PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Pennsylvania State University, though his home will always be the swamp waters of northern Louisiana

Richard Dokey has published more than 200 stories in the reviews. His stories have won awards and prizes and have been frequently reprinted in anthologies, both regional and national. He has novels and story collections to his credit. Pale Morning Dun, his collection, published by University of Missouri Press, was nominated for the American Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Adelaide Books, New York, has just released his new collection of stories, The Loneliness Cafe.

Jack Freeman‘s work has recently appeared in Cacti Fur, Hamilton Stone Review, West Texas Literary Review, and elsewhere. He’s the host of the biweekly Interabang Podcast, produced by Interabang Books in Dallas. He lives in Texas.

Elizabeth Gordon is a Pushcart-nominated writer and a recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship for Poetry. Her poems and stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University and divides her time between Wilmington, North Carolina and Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Find her online at appalasianwriter.com.

Rick Hoffman is an English teacher who grew up in Mississippi and Louisiana and currently lives on Long Island with his wife and sons. His fiction has appeared in The Tishman Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Driftwood Press, and Edify Fiction. His short story “Biyanî,” about a Yazidi refugee living in São Paulo, is a nominee for Best of the Net, 2017. Forthcoming work is scheduled to appear in the Microtext 3 Anthology from Medusa’s Laugh. His novel, The Devils That Haunt You, is available on Amazon.

Laura Jones  found herself an accidental southerner when her parents moved to a small town in Central Florida when she was fifteen years old.  She went on to college at New York University, where she received her degree in Film and TV, and then worked professionally in New York and L.A. for PBS and ABC/Disney.  Later, she began a career in journalism and received her MFA in Nonfiction from Northwestern University.  Her publishing credits include Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Foglifter, The Drum, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and About Place Journal, to name a few.  Her collaborative work about growing up in the south, “Southlandia”, will appear in the 2018 anthology, They Said, edited by Simone Muench.  She currently teaches writing at Central State University.

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

Nick LaRocca‘s stories and essays have recently been featured in Euphony, Crack the Spine, Valley Voices, the 3288 Review, Per Contra, The Flagler Review, Outside In Magazine, the Steel Toe Review, South85, and the Milo Review, as well as Rush Hour: Bad Boys (Delacorte Press), Mason’s Road, and the Beloit Fiction Journal. His short story “Gestures” (Lowestoft Chronicle) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Fiction.

Lonormi Manuel is a native of southwest Virginia, but has called Kentucky home for almost thirty years. She is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Creative Writing program at Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has previously appeared in Still: The Journal, and her short story, “An Unmarked Grave” received the 2017 Fiction prize from that publication. She and her husband live in Anderson County, Kentucky.

Molly McConnell is a recent graduate of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied English, Creative Writing, and American Studies. She now lives in Thessaloniki, Greece and works at the American Farm School, where she manages the Gregory Maguire Writing Center. Her favorite parts of Greece can be found on the many plates of food she eats, but sadly, she has yet to see or eat a biscuit.

Janice Northerns, a native Texan, currently lives in southwest Kansas, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at a community college. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southwestern American Literature, Iron Horse Literary Review, College English, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Conference of College Teachers of English Studies, The Cape Rock, Poem, Slant, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Robert S. Newton Creative Writing Award for her poetry from Texas Tech University.

Margaux Novak has been published internationally in Wraparound South, Little Patuxent Review, River River, Sanctuary, Boston Poetry Magazine, Ink Seed, and Satul. She is a recipient of the Guy Owen Award, and winner of Dartmouth College’s Frost Place Poetry Award. Margaux was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize for her poem “Sea Witch,” which appeared in Little Patuxent Review. She was raised in coastal North Carolina and now resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sara Pirkle Hughes is the author of The Disappearing Act, which won the 2016 Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her poems have been published in Rattle, Reed, Entropy, TAB, Atlanta Review, Emrys, and Atticus Review, among other journals. Sara has received writing fellowships from The Anderson Center, I-Park Foundation, and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. She teaches literature and writing at The University of Alabama, where she also co-hosts the Pure Products Reading & Lecture Series.

Laura Jane Schwartz was born in Ireland, (née O’Gorman) and grew up in Tokyo, Singapore and New Jersey before attending Bard College in upper New York, where she majored in Japanese Studies. A regular contributor to the Singapore American Newspaper, her fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in a range of publications, including: The Shanghai Literary Review, Thoughtful Dog, and The Wall Street Journal. She’s as voracious a traveller as she is a reader, and to date has been to 32 countries. Laura currently resides in Singapore with her husband and the sunbird that frequents their balcony.

Kristin Van Tassel teaches writing and American literature at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. She writes essays and poetry about place, teaching, motherhood, and travel. Her work has appeared in literary, academic, and travel publications, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, World Hum, ISLE, The Journal of Ecocriticism, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Land Report, About Place, and Relief. Kristin lives on a small farm with her family, but she’s also drawn again and again to the world beyond.