Issue 8.2 Contributors

Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Posit, and The Maine Review. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.

Fred Bubbers lives in western Maryland with his wife, Susan, where he teaches high school literature and writing. Fred received his Bachelor of Arts in English from the State University of New York at Albany in 1982 and his M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2019. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in such journals as The Oregon Literary Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Loch Raven Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. His prose chapbook, The RIF, was released in March 2020 by Blue Cubicle Press. His blog is fredbubbers.com.

Emily Choate is the Fiction Editor of Peauxdunque Review. Her fiction appears in Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, The Florida Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Peatsmoke, and elsewhere. She writes regularly for Chapter 16, and other nonfiction appears in Atticus Review, Late Night Library, Bayou Magazine Online, and Nashville Scene, among others. Emily holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at Sewanee Writers Conference. She lives near Nashville, where she’s working on a novel.

Cianga is a Congolese multimedia artist, based in California. Cia began their art career with spoken word poetry, where they competed nationally and won multiple competitions including Oakland Poetry Slam’s 2018 Grand Slam Finals and Berkeley Fiction Review’s Sudden Fiction contest. They then went on to join UC Berkeley’s Arts and Research Center as a 2020 Poetry Fellow. Cia’s work engages with themes of diaspora, mental health and joy as radical resistance. For more of their work, including visual art, check out cianga.com.

Dante Di Stefano is the author of Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019) and Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Best American Poetry 2018, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Along with María Isabel Álvarez, he co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America (NYQ Books, 2018). He holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Binghamton University and is the poetry editor for the DIALOGIST.

Chase Dimock lives in Los Angeles and serves as the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. His debut book of poetry, Sentinel Species, was published in 2020 by Stubborn Mule Press. His poems have been published in Waccamaw, New Mexico Review, Faultline, Roanoke Review, and Flyway among others. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship in World Literature and LGBT Studies has appeared in College Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several edited anthologies. 

grace (ge) gilbert’s recent micro, poetics, and lyric essays can/will be found in the Adroit Journal, Hobart, ANMLY, Ninth Letter, Pithead Chapel, the Offing, the minnesota review, Gargoyle, DIALOGIST, The Penn Review, and others. They are an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh where they consume unholy amounts of cheese and dumplings. Peruse her work on her website gracegegilbert.com, or follow her on Twitter @geg2us.

Mariana Graciano (Argentina, 1982) studied Literature and Linguistics at Universidad de Buenos Aires, completed an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish at New York University and a doctorate at The Graduate Center (CUNY) in New York City, where she has been living since 2010 teaching literature and writing workshops. Her first book of short stories La visita (Demipage, 2013) earned her the recognition of Talento Fnac in Spain. Her novel Pasajes has two editions in Spanish and one in English (Passages). In 2018 she received the Artist-in-Residence Award from the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She is currently a participating author in the PEN / Faulkner Writers in Schools program and a professor at Pace University. Her website is www.marianagraciano.com.

D. A. Hosek’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Southwest Review, Switchback, Popshot, Steam Ticket, Blue River Review and elsewhere. He earned an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Tampa. He lives and writes in Oak Park, IL and spends his days as an insignificant cog in the machinery of corporate America. His website is http://dahosek.com.

Cyan James’s M.F.A. is from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded three Hopwoods. Her work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and has been published or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, Shenandoah, Image, Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, The Account, and Salon, among others. Currently she is revising a novel about the women who survived the Green River Killer. She loves fiddles, falconry, long road trips, old front porches, and Laphroaig.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abriana Jetté is the editor of the Stay Thirsty Poets anthology series. Her creative work has been published internationally in journals like Poetry New Zealand, The Moth, Plume Poetry Journal, The Seneca Review, and many other places. She teaches for Kean University.

Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry Press), which won the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Blue Mesa Review, and Cimarron Review. He teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Rachel Laverdiere writes, pots and teaches in her little house on the Canadian prairies. She is CNF editor at Barren Magazine, a CNF reader for Atticus Review and the creator of Hone & Polish Your Writing. Find Rachel’s words in journals such as Atlas and Alice, Lunch Ticket, Anti-Heroin Chic and Pithead Chapel. In 2020, her CNF made The Wigleaf Top 50 and was nominated for Best of the Net. For more, visit www.rachellaverdiere.com.

Gina Lee is an M.F.A. candidate in creative writing at the University of Texas in El Paso. Her poems have been published in Rio Grande Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. She is an Associate Poetry Editor for Poets Reading the News. New Jersey is home.

Jo Matthews is a freelance writer and copywriter. Her poems and writing have appeared in Popshot, Acumen, The Fish Anthology and The Times, and she was recently selected by Arvon as a winner of their 5-Day Poetry Challenge. Originally from Oxford, Jo now lives with her partner Koji and their daughter Aimi in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and alongside writing poetry is (very slowly) trying to master both Japanese and Dutch. 

Gabrielle McAree is from Fishers, IN. She studied Theatre and Writing at Long Island University Post. Her work appears or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Berkeley Fiction Review, Reflex Press, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. She’s on Twitter @gmcaree_.

Sarah Swinford was raised somewhere between a small town in Northern Germany and the suburbs of Houston, Texas. She is a recent graduate from the University of Houston, where she was on staff with Glass Mountain Magazine and majored in English — Creative Writing. Currently, she is pursuing her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston-Victoria. She has poems published/forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins and The Sierra Nevada Review.