Poetry

Austin Kodra holds an M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His poetry was a finalist for the 2014 Moon City Poetry Award, and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Harpur Palate, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Still: The Journal, Mason's Road, Barnstorm, Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Knoxville, TN, where he still hasn’t quite figured out what he wants to do with his life.

Chance Castro is an MFA Poetry student at CSU San Bernardino where he has served as poetry editor for Ghost Town Literary Magazine. He is the founding poetry editor for The Great American Literary Magazine. He is previously published or forthcoming in RHINO, Santa Clara Review, The Pacific Review, Tin Cannon, The Chaffey Review, and elsewhere.

Charles Harper Webb's 11th  collection of poems, Brain Camp, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2015. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, Webb teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.

Christopher Nelson is the author of Blue House, published in the New American Poets Chapbook Series. Among his honors are fellowships from the Jacob Javits Foundation and the Poetry Society of America. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Bloom, Fairy Tale Review, The Good Men Project, Spork, Voca, and elsewhere. Since 2008 he has edited Under A Warm Green Linden, an online archive of interviews with poets. He teaches at William Penn University and in the summer workshop series at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

Edward Mayes’s books of poetry include First Language (Juniper Prize, University of Massachusetts Press) and Works & Days (AWP Prize in Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press). He has published poems in The Southern Review, Poetry, The New Yorker, APR, and The Best American Poetry, with recent poems in The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, AGNI, Colorado Review, Southwest Review, Blackbird, and Crazyhorse. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina and Cortona, Italy with his wife, the writer, Frances Mayes. Their latest collaboration is The Tuscan Sun Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2012).

A singer-songwriter and poet from Atascadero, California, Ephraim Scott Sommers is the author of The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire (Tebot Bach 2017). Having received his PhD from Western Michigan University, he currently teaches on the Graduate Creative Writing Faculty at the University of Central Florida.

Jeff Oaks' newest chapbook, Mistakes with Strangers, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2014. He has published poems in a number of literary magazines, most recently in Assaracus, Barrow Street, Field, North American Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. His essays have appeared in At Length, Kenyon Review Online, and Creative Nonfiction, and in the anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. He teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and Minnesota Review. He won the 2011 Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio (2014), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.

Les Kay holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati's Creative Writing program. His first chapbook, The Bureau, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2015. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals including The McNeese Review, Redactions, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Wherewithal, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Whiskey Island, and Sugar House Review.

Meg Johnson is the author of the full length poetry collection Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014), which was recently a NewPages Editor's Pick. Her poems have appeared in Hobart, Nashville Review, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and others. Meg started dancing at a young age and worked professionally in the performing arts for many years. She is the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal and recently received her MFA in creative writing from the NEOMFA Program. Meg is currently a lecturer at Iowa State University.

Michael Derrick Hudson lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana where he works for the Allen County Public Library in the Genealogy Center. Five of his poems were recently named co-winner of the 2014 Manchester Poetry Prize, which was founded by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Poetry (March 2015), Boulevard, Columbia, Fugue, Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, New Letters, and West Branch. Over the past few years his poems have won The Madison Review 2009 Phyllis Smart Young Prize, River Styx 2009 International Poetry Contest, and the 2010 and 2013 New Ohio Review contests.

Muriel Nelson’s publications include Part Song, winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize (Bear Star Press), and Most Wanted, winner of the ByLine Chapbook Award (ByLine Press). Nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Four Way Review, Front Porch Journal, Hunger Mountain, National Poetry Review, The New Republic, Northwest Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Superstition Review, and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Italian Culture published her critical essay on Eugenio Montale. She holds master's degrees from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the University of Illinois School of Music.

Nancy Chen Long is the author of the chapbook Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013). You’ll find her recent and forthcoming work in DIAGRAM, Sycamore Review, Mason’s Road, RHINO, and elsewhere. She received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering Technology and an M.B.A., worked as an electrical engineer, software consultant, and project manager, and more recently earned an M.F.A. As a volunteer with the local Writers Guild, Nancy coordinates the Lemonstone Poetry Reading Series and works with others to offer poetry workshops. She’s currently employed at Indiana University and lives in south-central Indiana.

Natalie Easton lives in Connecticut. Her work has recently appeared in Rust + Moth, Foundling Review, and tinywords. She was a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Nicole Rollender is assistant poetry editor at Minerva Rising Literary Journal and editor of Stitches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, Radar Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Little Deaths, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications. Her chapbooks are Absence of Stars (Dancing Girl Press & Studio), Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications) and Bone of My Bone, a winner in Blood Pudding Press’s 2015 Chapbook Contest, forthcoming this year. She’s the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Ruminate Magazine and Princemere Journal.

Patricia Caspers is the founding editor of West Trestle Review and poetry editor at Prick of the Spindle. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Quiddity, PANK, and Fjord’s Review. Her full-length collection In the Belly of the Albatross is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press in September 2015.

Susan Grimm’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, Poetry East, The Journal, and other publications. Her book of poems, Lake Erie Blue, was published by BkMk Press in 2004. She also edited Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems (2006). She won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize (2010) and the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize (2011). Her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011. In 2014 she received her second Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. She blogs at The White Space Inside the Poem.

Susan Rich is the author of four poetry collections including Cloud Pharmacy, a runner-up for the Julie Suk Award, and The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her other books include Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award.  She is a recipient of fellowships and awards from Artists Trust, the Fulbright Foundation, and The Times Literary Supplement of London. Rich’s poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, New England Review, and World Literature Today.

Trina Young is a recent grad from DePaul University with a passion for any kind of writing she can do. She was one of the winners of the Pegasus Young Playwrights competition in 2010, and has had one poem published by Afterimage Online’s Inklight gallery. She continues to submit to journals in order to build her credits and be included among many other talented people. She currently writes for Blavity, a site for black millennials to fight the stereotypes against them, and would like to eventually write for comedy TV as well. She lives in Chicago, IL.

Yosef Rosen is completing his M.F.A. in poetry at Bowling Green State University, and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Mid-American Review. His poems are published in Slipstream, The Chariton Review, Blue Monday Review, Gloom Cupboard, and Maudlin House, and forthcoming in Common Ground Review. Although he currently resides in the Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio, his heart and liver belong to St. Louis, and he can be found there during summers and occasional breaks.