Nonfiction

Brandon Brook Michalik is a writing instructor in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she earned her M.F.A. in poetry in 2007. She currently lives in Mesa, Arizona. 

Chauna Craig’s essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Sycamore Review, Lime Hawk Review, CALYX and Terrain.org. Her work has been recognized by the Pushcart Prize anthology and Best American Essays, and she’s won fellowships to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Hedgebrook Writers Retreat. She teaches creative writing and coordinates the writing program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

James Cihlar's most recent poetry book,  The Shadowgraph, came out from the University of New Mexico Press in 2020. His previous books are  Rancho Nostalgia and Undoing. His poetry chapbooks include What My Family Used, A Conversation with My Imaginary Daughter, and Metaphysical Bailout. He earned his MA and PhD at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and his BA at the University of Iowa. His writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, Lambda Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and Smartish Pace.

Jo Scott-Coe’s first book is Teacher at Point Blank (Aunt Lute 2010). Her essays have appeared in Salon, The Los Angeles Times, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Ruminate, The Nervous Breakdown, and Ninth Letter. In 2009 and 2010, her work received notable listings in Best American Essays. Scott-Coe is an associate professor of English at Riverside City College in Southern California, where she also teaches public writing workshops for the Inlandia Institute. Her forthcoming book, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, seeks to understand the relationship between the 1966 UT Austin sniper and a friend who was a Catholic priest.

Essays and stories by Joan Marcus appear in Fourth Genre, The Georgia Review, The Sun Magazine, The Smart Set, Laurel Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. She is a two-time recipient of the Constance Saltonstall grant for upstate New York writers. She lives in upstate New York with her spouse and daughters and teaches creative writing at Ithaca College. "Embrace the Mystery" is part of an essay collection in progress, Exalting the Weird, about the author's experience during her college years of caring for her terminally ill mother.  

Kristen Keckler's poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Ecotone, The Iowa Review, Vestal Review, South Dakota Review, Santa Clara Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Boiler, and other journals. She co-authored with Bill Roorbach the 2nd edition of the nonfiction craft guide, Writing Life Stories. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. 

Laura Esther Wolfson lives in New York City, where she earns her living as a translator of Russian, French and Spanish to English. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Gettysburg Review, Poetry Daily, The Rumpus, The Sun, Zyzzyva and elsewhere and has been cited repeatedly as "notable" in Best American Essays.

Steven Faulkner has published essays in North American Review, Fourth Genre, Southern Humanities Review, DoubleTake, Texas Review, Big Muddy,Wisconsin Trails Magazine, Beacon’s Best, and has been noted in Best American Essays. A movie, Waterwalk, based on his book Waterwalk: A Passage of Ghosts, has been released across the United States and Canada. A version of “Photo Album” appears in his work-in-progress: Bitterroot: Traveling with Lewis and Clark, Pierre Jean De Smet, and the Nez Perce.