Elisha Holt is a father and writer from California’s Palo Verde Valley and a lifelong resident of the desert Southwest. His work has appeared in Vine Leaves, Eckleberg Review, Screaming Sheep, and other journals.

A Straight Line through the Labyrinth, Volume 2, Issue 1 (Pushcart Nomination)

Richard Jones is the author of seven books of poems from Copper Canyon Press, including The Correct Spelling & Exact Meaning. A new collection, King of Hearts, is forthcoming from Adastra Press in 2015, and a new Copper Canyon collection is in the works. He is editor of the literary journal Poetry East and its many anthologies, including, Paris, Origins, and Bliss. He also edits the free poetry app, “The Poet’s Almanac.”

Strindberg and Miller, Volume 2, Issue 1

Meghan McNamara is a third year fiction candidate in George Mason University’s MFA Creative Writing program. A California transplant, McNamara moved to Washington, D.C. in 2008 to pursue a career reporting on national politics. After a brief stint in journalism, McNamara began taking workshops at the Bethesda Writers Center, which prompted her to pursue a degree in creative writing. She also helped found and serve as communications director of Northern Virginia’s Stillhouse Press. Though she has spent the bulk of her degree on a novel-length work, she appreciates a good short story. Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeghanMcNamara

Among Other Things, Volume 2, Issue 1

Margarita Meklina is a fiction writer and essayist born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. She came to the United States as a refugee in the early 1990s and has been living in San Francisco ever since. She received the 2003 Andrei Bely Prize (Russia’s first independent literary prize, which enjoys a special reputation for honoring dissident and nonconformist writing) for her short story collection Battle at St. Petersburg and the 2009 Russian Prize, awarded by the Yeltsin Center Foundation, for her manuscript My Criminal Connection to Art. Meklina has also published interviews with Alessandro Baricco, Diana di Prima, Ursula K. Le Guin, and David Sedaris, among others. Her English language articles and short stories appeared in Flash Fiction International (W.W.Norton, 2015), Brooklyn Rail, Words Without Borders, The Conium Review, The Cumberland River Review, Reunion, Landfall (New Zealand), and many other publications.

The Eighth Day of Hanukkah, Volume 2, Issue 1

Jesse Millner is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida International University and has published poems most recently in The Florida Review, Juxta Prose, and Gravel.

1968, Verde y Oro, and A Sky Language, Volume 2, Issue 1

William Morris is an MFA candidate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His work has been published or is forthcoming online at Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Fiction Southeast, Oblong Magazine, drafthorse, and 5×5. He is the recipient of the 2015 Besse Patterson Gephardt Award for Fiction. William lives in St. Louis, where he devotes his time to cats, coffee, and creative writing.

Consider the following scenario:, Volume 2, Issue 1

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (Accents Publishing), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, The Louisville Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and Diode Editions, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is Interim Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Obscured Series 8, Obscured Series 12, and Obscured Series 5, Volume 2, Issue 1

Tom Pescatore can sometimes be seen wandering along the Walt Whitman Bridge or down the sidewalks of Philadelphia’s old Skid Row. He might have left a poem or two behind to mark his trail. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com.

They All Float Down here in Texas Flood Waters, Volume 2, Issue 1

Sally Zakariya’s poems have appeared in Tishman Review, Apeiron Review, Broadkill Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Emerge, Third Wednesday, Evening Street Review, and elsewhere. Zakariya has won prizes from Poetry Virginia and Virginia Writers Club. She is the author of Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011) and editor of Joys of the Table, an anthology of poems about food. Zakariya blogs at www.ButDoesItRhyme.com.

Meditation On a French Fry, Volume 2, Issue 2

Tobi Alfier is a five-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Her most current chapbooks are The Coincidence of Castles from Glass Lyre Press, and Romance and Rust from Blue Horse Press. Her collaborative full-length collection, The Color of Forgiveness, is available from Mojave River Press. She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).

Going Walkabout in Romilly-sur-Seine, Volume 2, Issue 1