Michelle Acker is a Floridian poet and writer currently earning an MFA in creative writing at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She worked as a substitute teacher for the 2016-2017 school year, and found it difficult to write about anything else. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The 2River View, Gesture Literary Journal, and Poetry is Dead. You can find her on Instagram @acker.michelle.
Flash fiction and longer stories by Jeanne Althouse have appeared in numerous literary journals. Her story, “Goran Holds his Breath’ was nominated by Shenandoah for the Pushcart Prize. An early draft of her novel was a finalist in the Augury Books Editor’s Prize. A collection of her flash fiction will be published in 2018 by Red Bird Chapbooks. She lives in California and loves reading Lydia Davis.
William Auten is the author of the novel Pepper’s Ghost, a 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award finalist for contemporary fiction. Recent work has appeared in BULL, Crab Orchard Review, Gravel, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Slush Pile Magazine.
Hilary Biehl‘s poems and short fiction have appeared in Abyss & Apex, Luna Station Quarterly, Expanded Horizons and Barking Sycamores. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Charles W. Brice is a retired psychoanalyst and is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (WordTech Editions, 2016) and of Mnemosyne’s Hand (WordTech Editions, forthcoming, May, 2018). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, Chiron Review, The Dunes Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, SLAB, The Paterson Literary Review, Plainsongs, The Writing Disorder, and elsewhere.
Michelle Cacho-Negrete is a retired social worker, currently living in Portland, who spent the formative years in Brooklyn, as illustrated by much of her writing. Four of her essays have been among the 100 most notable. She has received six Pushcart nomination, is in five anthologies including Norton’s College Anthology, and was a finalist in the Brooklyn Literary Arts contest. She and four other women formed a women’s speakers bureau after the 2016 election and speak for free in junior and high schools, colleges and at various organizations about women’s history and women’s rights. She’s delighted to be in Permafrost, one of her favorite literary magazines.
Emily Capettini is the author of Thistle (2015), winner of Omnidawn’s 2013 Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest and Assistant Editor with Sundress Publications. Her short work can be found in journals such as Menacing Hedge, Monkeybicycle, and Queen Mob’s Tea House. Originally from Batavia, IL, Emily is now Assistant Professor of English at Indiana State University where she teaches literature and creative writing. Find her online at emilycapettini.com.
Seth Copeland edits petrichor and New Plains Review. He teaches and studies in the Oklahoma City metro.
Lisa DesRochers-Short received her BA from UMaine, Orono and is a current MFA candidate at George Mason University. Lisa is the Poetry Editor of Hellscape Press and a reader with So to Speak. She has been published in Feast Magazine and was a runner up in Breakwater Review’s 2017 Peseroff Prize in Poetry.
Lesley Jenike‘s poems and essays have appeared or will appear soon in The Kenyon Review, POETRY, The Bennington Review, NELLE, Rattle, The Southern Review, Waxwing, and many other journals. Her most recent collections are Holy Island (Gold Wake, 2017) and Punctum : (Kent State University Press, 2017). She teaches literature and writing courses at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH where she lives with her husband and two young children.
Jury S. Judge is an internationally published artist, writer, poet, photographer, and political cartoonist. She is the cartoonist for the Noise, a literary arts and news magazine. Her Astronomy Comedy cartoons are also published in The Lowell Observer. Her artwork has been widely featured in literary magazines such as, Dodging The Rain, The Tishman Review, Claudius Speaks, and The Manhattanville Review. She has been interviewed on the television news program NAZ Today for her work as a political cartoonist. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 2014. If you are interested in commissioning her for artwork or illustrations, email her at jurysjudge@gmail.com.
Liz Marlow earned her MFA from Western Michigan University and MBA from The University of Memphis. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, B O D Y, The Carolina Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
Jake Maynard is a recent graduate of the MFA program at West Virginia University. Before the MFA, he spent two years as a social worker in a small West Virginia town. His fiction and nonfiction appear in Fugue, River Teeth, Carolina Quarterly, Appalachian Heritage, and others. These are his first published poems.
Gabe Montesanti holds an MFA in nonfiction from Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published (or is forthcoming) in Brevity, Sinister Wisdom, The Offing, Devil’s Lake, and Crab Creek Review. She is currently at work on a full-length memoir about her experience playing roller derby.
Sean W. Murphy is a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing. An award-winning author, as well as a formally recognized Zen meditation teacher, his novel-in-progress, Wilson’s Way won the 2017 William Faulkner Wisdom Award from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society. The latest edition of his nonfiction chronicle of Zen in America, One Bird, One Stone, won the 2014 International Book Award, while his debut novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, received the Hemingway Award for a First Novel. His other books include The Time of New Weather, named Best Novel in the 2009 National Press Women’s Communication Awards, and the Pulitzer-nominated novel The Finished Man (all published by Bantam/Dell Books). He leads writing and meditation workshops for a variety of organizations and conferences, is an adjunct professor for the University of New Mexico in Taos, and is co-founder and Director of the nonprofit Sage Institute for Creativity and Consciousness, which hosts an innovative Meditation Leader Training Program in Taos. See his website at www.murphyzen.com
Printmaker Daniella Napolitano draws her inspiration from nature and ecology. Her art explores the diverse and complex relationships between animals, humans, and the environment. She highlights the unique personalities of her subjects with detailed line work and bright color. Napolitano was born in Winston-Salem, NC and currently lives and works in Little Rock, AR. She studied at American University in Washington, DC where she received her Bachelors of Arts in studio art and minor in graphic design. She sees printmaking as a combination of fine art and design and is drawn to linocut and screenprinting techniques that lend themselves to bold visual interpretation.
Jess Nieberg (they/them) is a queer jewish poet living in Boulder, CO. they were a semifinalist at the 2017 national poetry slam and are a current member of the 2018 denver mercury slam team. they are an editor for two journals, Walkabout and Timber, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Western Humanities Review, Lunch Ticket, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bottlecap, and The Hunger, among others.
Corey Oglesby is a poet from the Washington, D.C., area, currently studying poetry in the MFA program at the University of Idaho. His work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from DIAGRAM, Beloit Poetry Journal, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Meadow, Blood Orange Review, and elsewhere. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the literary journal Fugue.
Ana Prundaru lives in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent work appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cream City Review, Storm Cellar, and more. Her latest poetry book is Anima by Dancing Girl Press.
Tara Roeder is the author of the chapbooks (all the things you’re not) and Maritime. Her work has appeared in multiple venues including 3:AM Magazine, Hobart, Cheap Pop, Literary Orphans, and Monkeybicycle. She is an associate professor of writing in Queens, New York, where she lives with her partner and some animal friends.
Spencer Silverthorne‘s chapbook Premium Brawn was a finalist for the 2017 Bateau Press Keel Chapbook Contest. He also has work in Assaracus, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Tammy, Title Magazine, Vagabond City, and others. Originally from Philadelphia, he teaches English in Limpopo Province, South Africa.
Burnside Soleil grew up in a houseboat on the bayou, but these days, he’s a pilgrim in New Orleans. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, Bear Review, Louisville Review, and elsewhere.
Erika Staiger is an MFA candidate at the University of South Florida where she also teaches fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Fox Literary Magazine, COG Literary Magazine, the Sandhill Review, and others. Before moving to Florida, she was a ballerina for sixteen years.
Sophia Starmack‘s poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Best New Poets, The Threepenny Review, and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry chapbook, The Wild Rabbit, was published in 2015. She is the Writing Fellowship Coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
L Swartz eschews the fancy and embraces the shiny. L wants to live anywhere the train goes, for 6 months at a time. L’s favorite color is the color(s) L is looking at now. (L is a crow.) See where L literally stands each day of the Trump regime at propagandaministry.tumblr.com. L Swartz’s chapbook, Land of Lists, was published by Floating Bridge Press in 2016. L’s deck of Shufflepoems was published by Minor Arcana Press in 2014. L is working on a story map of pre-plague queer Seattle.
Kami Westhoff is the author of Sleepwalker, the recipient of the 2016 Dare to Be Award from Minerva Rising, and the collaborative chapbook, Your Body a Bullet, co-written with Elizabeth Vignali, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Her work has appeared in various journals including Meridian, Third Coast, Eclectica, Carve, Passages North, West Branch, The Pinch, and Waxwing. She teaches creative writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.
Caroline Wilkinson’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Sonora Review, DIAGRAM, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere. Having received her MFA at Washington University in Saint Louis, she is in the Creative Writing Ph.D. program at University of Tennessee.
Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina.