Paul Bartolo is a tennis coach based in London who is increasingly spending his time writing. His stories often follow Leonard, a character obsessed with order and fitting in as he navigates class, status, and the human condition. He is also completing Imposter Theory, a two-volume novel in which Leonard’s search for order draws him into the unlikely realm of theoretical physics, where he builds an improbable but coherent model of light and, unknowingly, enters the model.

Dan Garner teaches composition and ESL at the City Colleges of Chicago. He also works as a copyeditor for Haymarket Books. His fiction has appeared in Cagibi, Hunger Mountain, LEON Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Writer’s Foundry Review, and Jarnal, and is forthcoming in The Arkansas International.

Trae Stewart is a professor, author, and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner. His work has appeared in Switchgrass Review, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, San Antonio Review, Medicine and Meaning, and Dipity Literary Magazine, among others.

Joel Streicker’s stories have been published in Great Lakes Review, Tupelo Quarterly Review, Burningword, and New Flash Fiction Review, among other journals. He won Cutthroat Magazine’s short story contest in 2021 and Blood Orange Review’s fiction contest in 2020. He has published poetry in English and Spanish, including the collection El amor en los tiempos de Belisario (Bogotá: Común Presencia). His translations of such writers as Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez, and Pilar Quintana have appeared in A Public Space, McSweeney’s, and other journals. Streicker’s essays have appeared in The Forward, Letralia, and Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico, among other publications.

Mrityunjay’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Indianapolis Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Fourteen Hills. He is a Tin House scholar, Lambda Literary fellow, and a Brooklyn Poets fellow. He was a recipient of the Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. He has worked as an editor at various literary journals. He is an editor for ANMLY magazine, and a reader for Split/Lip Press, Harvard Review, and The Masters Review.  

Faith Thiebaud, 25, she/her, is an author from Marshall, Texas. Although she is primarily a poet, she likes to switch it up every now and then with some prose. If you enjoy her work, check her out on most social media platforms @faiththiebs or you can purchase her poetry chapbook, “I’m Not Hungry,” from Bottlecap Press!

Arjun Razdan was born in the city of Jaahilu, to the south of Kashmir, while his parents were on vacation, and grew up in many countries, including India. This Kashmiri writer has stacked up a record of 23 short story publications in 27 literary journals. He is the author of Je bande, donc, je suis, and the biography Estis, Alauda, Pares.

Bruce Crown is from Toronto. He is an alumnus of the University of Toronto and the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of four novels, available wherever books are sold, and has served as the editor of the Hart House Review. He splits his time between Copenhagen and Toronto. // bluesky: @brucecrown // instagram & threads: @wittyoutlaw // brucecrown.ca //

Judith Shapiro is a DC writer who spends a lot of time in Hoboken, New Jersey staring at the New York skyline. When the memoir she’s writing looks the other way, she secretly delights in flash prose and poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in The Citron Review, The New York Times, The McNeese Review, Bending Genres, The Sun, and elsewhere.

Kevin Bain is a memoir writer and script reader whose work has been featured in The Argyle and Halfway Down The Stairs literary journals. Originally from Chicagoland, he now resides outside Cleveland with his wife and their loving menagerie of cats.

Shawn Sumrall (he/him) is a healthcare desk jockey living in Indiana, the orthopedic capital of the world (self-appointed). He enjoys watching ducks paddle around in the pond behind his house and teaching his son to love books. He grew up in a village in Virginia where the Marriott hotel company owns 4,200 acres of cattle ranch.

Tim Ryan’s work on labor rights has taken him around the world, opening vistas and working with activists in Asia, the former Soviet Union, and Africa, whose stories he otherwise couldn’t possibly imagine. His articles on labor, politics, and culture have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Foreign Policy, Thomson-Reuters, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Huffington Post, High Times, New Woman, Typebar Magazine, and Defenestrationism.net.  His fiction has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, The Write Launch, Fine Madness, Northern Lights, and the Clinton Street Quarterly, among others. He’s also the executive producer of the award-winning documentary feature film, Knots: A Forced Marriage Story.

Lis Anna-Langston is an award-winning author, storyteller, and cultural observer whose work explores love, devotion, and the emotional architecture of everyday life. Her essays and stories examine how people navigate identity, memory, and social systems that have outlived their moral justification in a rapidly changing world. Hailed as “an author with a genuine flair for originality” by Midwest Book Review and “a loveable, engaging, original voice…” by Publishers Weekly, Lis Anna-Langston is the author of five novels, winner of eighteen book awards, a three-time Pushcart nominee, Best American Short Stories nominee, and a Magna Cum Laude graduate published extensively in literary journals. You can find her in the wilds of South Carolina plucking stories out of thin air. Get social with her @lis.anna.langston on Insta or find more at www.lisannalangston.com

Brian Wallace Baker holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University and works as a freelance editor and writing coach. His work has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, River Teeth, Janus Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. He lives in rural Utah with his wife and children. Say hello at brianwallacebaker.com.

Riyad Carey lives in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in Pictura Journal and Last Leaves Magazine.

Matt Coonan is a poet, emcee and teacher from New York. He holds an MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook University. He is the author of Toy Gun (Button Poetry, 2023), as well as two chapbooks. His poems have been featured on Button Poetry and published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Southampton Review, and Inklette, among others.

Elizabeth Fogle – Originally from North Carolina, Elizabeth Fogle currently teaches literature and writing in Western Pennsylvania, where she lives with her small family. She’s had poems published over the years in several journals and is finishing up her first full-length collection about surviving cancer, parenthood, and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

J.M.C. Kane is a writer and environmental attorney in New Orleans. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk U.K.), a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. His prose work has appeared in Eleventh Hour Literary, Redivider, Minnesota Review, New Ohio Review, Plough, Dappled Things, and others.

Ehsan Ahmed Mehedi is a poet and visual artist from Bangladesh. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Frozen Sea, Oracle, Harbor Review, The Quarter(ly), Stonecoast Review, and others. His poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently a graduate poetry fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Iowa City. He can be found on Instagram @ehsanesque.

Emi Miyaoka is a Japanese poet and a Hirakata city official. In Japan, she has published the books The Bird’s Wish, It Flies Silently (Minatonohito, 2012), and Beyond The Border (Shichosha, 2015). The musical album Parallel Motion, Flying Cat’s Silence sets four poems from there books to music for a mixed chorus and piano. The two Japanese books and one CD can be found in the Harvard-Yenching Library.

Poetry “Parallel Motion, Flying Cat’s Silence” (Modern Poetry in Translation, UK) . Poetry “Early in summer, Diophantine approximation” (Poetry, US) . First Japanese translation of Schrödinger’s Poetry published in 2024 (Kankanbou, JP).

Katherine Gekker is the author of In Search of Warm Breathing Things (Glass Lyre Press) and O My Charmer (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems have appeared in many journals. She served as Poetry Assistant Editor for Delmarva Review. Gekker’s poems, collectively called “…to Cast a Shadow Again,” have been set to music by composer Eric Ewazen. Composer Carson Cooman has set a seasonal cycle of her poems, “Chasing the Moon Down.” to music. Gekker was born in Washington, DC. She founded a commercial printing company in 1974 and sold it 31 years later. 

Matt Vekakis is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at the University of Florida. His work has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, Pangyrus, Southern Humanities Review, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly. He lives with his husband in an old mill on the Blackstone Rive.

Alexey Adonin is a Belarus-born, Israel-based painter whose work explores the meeting point of abstraction and surrealism. Working primarily in oil on canvas, he develops his paintings through an intuitive process of spontaneous marks, layered surfaces, and gradual refinement. His compositions often suggest imagined landscapes, inner states, and ambiguous spaces that invite personal interpretation. Adonin’s work has been exhibited locally and internationally and is held in private collections worldwide.

JC Alfier’s (they/them) artistic directions are informed by photo-artists Toshiko Okanoue, Deborah Turbeville, Francesca Woodman, and Katrien De Blauwer. Their most recent poetry book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press. Journal credits include Copper Nickel, Faultline, Fugue, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, and Vassar Review.

Jeremiah Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and travel writer. His travels have taken him to over a hundred countries and all seven continents, while his photography has been published internationally and exhibited worldwide. He is the author of four travel books, including From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start, On to Plan C: A Return to Travel, and Around the World in Eighty Photos.

Ners Neonlumberjack was born in a tiny town in central Indiana in 1986. Having lived throughout the United States, the variety of landscapes in which they have lived informs a wealth of variety and interest in plants and animals in imagery as well as material choice. After graduating Herron School of Art and Design with degrees in Painting, Sculpture, and Art History in 2009 the longing for a sense of place and being conscious of the fragile nature of mortality has been a current within the works. Currently based in Puerto Rico, their works maintain an environmentally conscious and sustainable working practice. Drawing inspiration from the natural beauty across the continent, works straddle the line between painting and sculpture showcasing vibrant colors in geometric patterns on raw natural materials such as sticks, stones, bones, feathers, and logs. The ever-present theme of mortality is contrasted with lively colors, and abstracted imagery of flora and fauna abound as they correlate alongside three-dimensional works.

Elizabeth Hutchinson earned an Associate Diploma from The Ontario College of Art, a B.A. from The University of Guelph and an M.F.A., cum laude, from The New York Academy of Art. She has taught art at both university and college levels and has led workshops abroad in Morocco, the United States and in Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she now lives. Her work is steadily gaining recognition and is being collected in both private and public collections. You can find her on Instagram @elizabeth_hutchinson_pec.

Mindy Kober is a contemporary pop artist living in Los Angeles, and her preferred medium is gouache on paper. Her work explores the themes of reconstructed memories, societal codes, and the natural world, and evokes an illustrative charm typically found in storybooks. She uses the idea of storytelling in her work to piece together forgotten traditions and half learned folklore, reassembled and retold by the universe itself. You can find her on IG @kobermindy and on her artist website at www.mindykober.com.