CONTRIBUTORS

Modupe Abidaku is a Nigerian physician and writer whose work has appeared in Punocracy, Meeting of Minds UK and Unbias The News. Outside work, she enjoys watching unrealistic romantic comedies, and running her lifestyle and social commentary newsletter.

Priscilla Atkins is the author of The Café of Our Departure (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Drinking the Pink (Seven Kitchens Press). Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, POETRY, [PANK], Marrow Magazine, Studies in American Humor and other journals. She lives in Michigan.

Callista Buchen is the author of the full-length collection Look Look Look (Black Lawrence Press), as well as the chapbooks The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press) and Double-Mouthed (dancing girl press). Her work appears in Nimrod, Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals, and her poem “Taking Care” has been illustrated by The Oatmeal (https://theoatmeal.com/comics/taking_care). She lives in the Midwest with her family. 

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in swamp pink, Craft, Moon City Review, Fractured Lit, Wigleaf and The Threepenny Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and look out for Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the coauthor of The Creative Ethnographer's Notebook (2024), the poetry book, Imperfect Tense (2016) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award for Professors Who Inspire, she was appointed in 2020 as Fulbright Scholar Ambassador. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Lilith, American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Mom Egg, Plume, Tupelo, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review and elsewhere.

Nianxi Chen, born 1970 in Northern China, began writing poems in 1990. In 1999, he left his hometown and labored as a miner for 16 years. In 2015, he couldn’t continue work due to occupational disease. In 2016, he was awarded the Laureate Worker Poet Prize. His rise to fame as a "migrant worker poet" was featured in a 2021 New York Times Article. Chen's poetry book, Records of Explosion provides lyrical documentation of the hidden costs behind China's financial boom. Chen's poems in translation have appeared in Tupelo, Rattle, Plume, Versopolis, and forthcoming 2024 in Poetry Northwest, Hayden's Ferry Review, Southern Humanities Review.

Gabriel Costello is a poet from the far south side of Chicago. He is currently an MFA student in poetry at the University of Virginia. His poems have recently appeared in Afternoon Visitor, Bluestem, and elsewhere. His book reviews have appeared in Meridian. 

Ian Haight’s collection of poetry, Celadon, won Unicorn Press’ First Book Prize. With T’ae-yong Hŏ, he is the co-translator of Spring Mountain: Complete Poems of Nansŏrhŏn and Homage to Green Tea by the Korean monk, Ch’oŭi. Other awards include Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Translation, and grants from the Daesan Foundation, the Korea Literary Translation Institute, and the Baroboin Buddhist Foundation. Poems, essays, interviews, reviews, microfiction and translations appear

in Barrow Street, Writer’s Chronicle, Hyundai Buddhist News, Full Stop, Moon Park Review and Prairie Schooner. 

Gustavo Hernandez is the author of the poetry collection Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press). In January 2024, Hernandez was appointed Poet Laureate of Orange County, California. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico and was raised in Santa Ana, California, where he still resides.

T’ae-yong Hŏ has been awarded translation grants from the Daesan Foundation and Korea Literature Translation Institute. With Ian Haight, he is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Hŏ and Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim—finalist for ALTA’s Stryk Prize. Working from the original classical hansi, T’ae-yong’s translations of Korean poetry have appeared in Agni, New Orleans Review, and Atlanta Review.

Chiagoziem Jideofor is Queer and Igbo. Her poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in Poetry Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, berlin lit, The Lincoln Review, Passages North, Commonwealth’s ADDA, the minnesota review, Sho Poetry Journal, Consequence Forum, Obsidian, and so on.

Elias Lindert is the author of the novellas Tacos in Chicago and Convalesce and editor of the short story anthology New Voices of a Changing Myanmar. His short fiction has won or placed in contests by Epiphany Magazine, Glimmer Train and Narrative, and has appeared in other literary journals. He has spent most of his adult life as an expatriate writer and educator across Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and he currently lives in Bangkok, where he teaches at Chulalongkorn University. You can find him at eliaslindert.com.

Maria Martin is a poet living in North Charleston, SC where she works for the city coordinating arts enrichment programs for public schools. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Pleiades, New Ohio Review, and Threepenny Review. mariasprogress.com 

Jules Miller is a poet who puts trans life and the natural world into conversation in his work, which has appeared in Carolina Muse, The Light Ekphrastic, Atlantis Magazine, and the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. He graduated in 2024 with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He tries to enjoy the little things in life, and as such, is a dedicated caretaker to many shrimp.

Thomas Mixon has poems and stories in Feral, Apple Valley Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. He's trying to write a few books.

Sati Mookherjee is the author of the poetry collections Eye (Ravenna Press, 2022) and Ways of Being (Albiso Award, MoonPath Press, 2023). A third collection, Deś, is forthcoming in 2026. Recent work appears in Tupelo Quarterly, Salamander and Northwest Review. Her collaborations with contemporary classical composers have been performed or recorded by ensemble (The Esoterics, Contemporary Chamber Composers and Players) and solo musicians (Hope Wechkin, Leaning Toward the Fiddler, Ravello Records). She has been awarded an Artist Trust / Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship, and serves on the Board of Directors of Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival. Please visit at satimookherjee.com.

Nansŏrhŏn (penname “White Orchid”) was a sequestered noblewoman who lived during the sixteenth century in Korea. Considered by many Korean scholars to be Korea’s greatest female poet, she died at the age of twenty-seven.

Matt Poindexter’s (he/him/his) poems have appeared in the Best New Poets series, Chicago Quarterly Review, storySouth, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He previously served as the editor of Inch (Bull City Press). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Hannah Smith is a writer in Dallas, Texas, where she works for Southwest Review. Her poems have been published in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Image, and elsewhere. Her collaborative chapbook, Metal House of Cards, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in Fall 2024.

Claire Walla is a writer from Los Angeles who received an MFA from Eastern Washington University. Her nonfiction has appeared in Baltimore Review and River Styx. This is her first published piece of fiction. Claire currently lives in Fairbanks, Alaska and can be found on Instagram: @clairewalla 

Kuo Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Education at Siena College and received her PhD in TESOL & World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her poem, “One Child Policy” was awarded second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Poetry Competition held by the American Anthropological Association. Her poems have appeared in The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, DoveTales, North Dakota Quarterly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, MUTHA Magazine, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Anthropology and Humanism.

Andrew Zhou is a queer Chinese writer and medical device engineer who grew up in the Minneapolis area but currently resides in Boston. He holds a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Foglifter Journal, Faultline, Jabberwock Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. Find him at zhouandrew.com.