CONTRIBUTORS

Jason Baltazar is a proud Salvadoran American, originally from the Appalachian corner of Maryland. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Salt Hill, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literature at James Madison University. For more info, check out his website: www.jasonbaltazar.com.

N. Bower lives in Atlanta. This is her first published nonfiction. Her fiction has appeared in Bodega, SmokeLong Quarterly, Third Point Press, and elsewhere.

Abigail Chang is a writer currently based in Taipei, Taiwan. Her work appears or is forthcoming from Fractured, Salamander, Los Angeles Review, Room, CAROUSEL, Moon City Review, Cortland Review, Citron Review, the Shore, and elsewhere. Find her at twitter @honeybutterball or at https://abigailchang.carrd.co.

K.S. Dyal is the author and illustrator of the novella It Felt Like Everything (Ad Hoc Fiction 2022) and work in or coming from Colorado Review, Booth, The Maine Review, CutBank, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is at work on a young adult novel. Find her on Twitter @KSDyal.

Hayley Graffunder’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she served as the managing editor for Blackbird. She teaches creative writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Minnesota.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of two poetry collections, Islanders (2016) and Faraway Places (2021), and an essay collection Western Journeys (2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism have been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, and The New Yorker.

Born in South Korea, Sekyo Nam Haines immigrated to the U.S. in 1973 as a registered nurse. She received her BA in American literature and writing at Goddard College ADP. She continued her study of English literature at the Harvard Extension school and poetry with the late Ottone M. Riccio in Boston, MA. Her first book, Bitter Seasons' Whip: The complete Poems of Lee Yuk Sa, was published in 2022 (Tolsun Books). Her poems appeared in the poetry journals Constellations, Off the Coast, Lily Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  Her translations of Kim Sowohl’s poetry appeared in The Harvard Review, The Brooklyn Rail: In Translation, Ezra, and Circumference.  Her translations of Cho Ji Hoon appeared in Interim, Asymptote’s translation Tuesday blog, The Fourth River, Tupelo Quarterly, Anomaly, The Tampa Review, May Day, Guernica Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Azonal, Diode, Common, Consequence Forum, Rhino and The Hopper Poetry, LIT Magazine, Los Angeles Review and are forthcoming in Gulf Coast Journal, Chicago Quarterly Review, Fourth River and Kestrel. Sekyo lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

Cho Ji Hoon (1920-1968) is a canonical modern poet of Korea and a scholar of Korean aesthetics, culture, and history. Although Cho Ji Hoon writes in a modernist free-verse form, his poetry is rooted in the literary Sijo tradition that began in 12th century. With intense local flavors, each poem is imbued with the sounds, smells and colors of pre-industrial Korea. Cho Ji Hoon grew up in a literati family in Ju Shil, Andong. Through his early childhood he was educated by his grandfather and at the local Confucian academic institute. At the age of 17, now well versed in classical Korean literature, he moved to Seoul to pursue a university education. While in college Cho Ji Hoon debuted with his poem “Old Fashioned Dress” (1938) in literary magazine MoonJang, In 1941, Cho Ji Hoon became a lecture at the Buddhist college in Wohljung temple in Odae san and lived a life of monk, which has a profound impact on his poetry. In 1948 he became a professor of Korean language and literature at Korea University where he remained for 20 years. During his career, Cho Ji Hoon published five poetry collections, as well as academic articles and books related to Korean literature and culture.

Ryan Habermeyer is the author of the short story collections Salt Folk (Cornerstone, 2024) and The Science of Lost Futures (BoA, 2018). His stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions, Alaska Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, Cimarron Review, Fairy Tale Review, and others. He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Salisbury University. Find him at ryanhabermeyer.com.

Khaled Mattawa is the William Wilhartz Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. His latest book of poems is Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf, 2020). A MacArthur Fellow, he is the current editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.

John McCarthy is the author of Scared Violent like Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which won the Jake Adam York Prize. He is a former winner of The Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, and his work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets 2015, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, and TriQuarterly. John received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and he is currently a Managing Editor of RHINO.

Stephanie Niu is a poet and interdisciplinary scholar from Marietta, Georgia. She is the author of Survived By, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize, and She Has Dreamt Again of Water, winner of the 2021 Diode Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in The Offing, Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She is currently completing a Fulbright scholarship on immigration and labor history on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

Adrian T. Quintanar is a poet from Pomona, California who earned an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and serves as the Managing Editor of Chapter House Journal. Adrian’s poems previously appeared in Denver Quarterly, Anacapa Review, Kweli Journal, and elsewhere.

Saadi Youssef (1934-2021) is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world. He was born near Basra, Iraq. Following his experience as a political prisoner in Iraq, he has spent most of his life in exile, working as a teacher and literary journalist throughout North Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of over forty books of poetry. Youssef has also published two novels and a book of short stories, and several books of essay and memoir. Youssef, who spent the last two decades of his life in London, was a leading translator to Arabic of works by Walt Whitman, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Federico Garcia Lorca, among many others.