Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a teacher, writer, researcher, and translator. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, Cyborg Chimera, Under the Ash, and Voices of the Elders, a pair of travel guides, and a translation of Sheng Keyi's novel 《北妹》 (Northern Girls) for Penguin Books.  Shelly's poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions, including dark 'til dawn, Things Disappear, and Studio White • Exhibition 2011.

 

Alex Chobur is a sculptor of discarded materials. He hails from St. Petersburg, Russia, but currently lives in London. As an artist, Chobur works in many applications, serving as an independent researcher in Quantum and Fundamental Physics.

 

Aviva Englander Cristy is a teacher and writer living in Milwaukee, WI. Her chapbook, The Interior Structure, was published in 2013 with dancing girl press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Salt Hill, Painted Bride Quarterly, Arsenic Lobster, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Prick of the Spindle, and BlazeVox, among others.

 

BiJian Fan was born in Beijing, China, where he learned paper art from his grandmother.   He studied in China, Japan, and the USA, earning his BS and MS in Mathematics, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.  Upon accomplishing a scientific career, Fan moved on to visual art.  He combines science and art, exploring the aesthetic and physical properties of various materials. Fan has exhibited internationally and earned numerous recognitions, including a 2008 Beijing Olympics exhibition, 2012 McDonald's advertisement, and 2013 Dodgers event.  

 

Gretchen Fletcher can’t decide if she is a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes. She leads writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the

Library of Congress. Her poetry has won numerous awards including the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights, Big Verse competition. Her poem, “And Still I Have Loved,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges, were published by Finishing Line Press.

 

Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, Pushcart nominee, and occasional photographer. She no longer lives for Art, but still thinks about it a lot. Her poems have previously appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, Bohemia, The Mom Egg, RiverLit, and qarrtsiluni. “Eggs Satori” was recently selected for Black Lawrence’s forthcoming anthology, FEAST. Centrifugal Eye recently featured her mini-chapbook, Floating Route. She will be a featured poet in a forthcoming issue of Unshod Quills. Kattywompus Press just released Burrowing Song, a collection of prose poems.

 

Chris Joyner is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Miami and calls Virginia home. While currently an adjunct Composition professor by day and a server by night, in a parallel universe, he ghostwrites for a well-respected rapper. His work has been awarded first place in Sixfold’s poetry contest, honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Sports Poetry and Prose Contest, and the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize. Find his poems in the North American Review, B O D Y, Penduline Press, Brusque, Fiddleblack, the Barely South Review, and elsewhere.

 

Alicia Lai is a senior at State College Area High School. She received a scholarship from Kenyon Review's Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize, first-place in the National Poetry Quarterly, first-place in poetry from the BYU High School Writing Contest, first-place in the 2012 Penn State International Writing Contest, and the 2011 Laurel Awards from Acclivity. Her work has also been published The Kenyon Review, Curio Poetry, and Adroit, among others. She attended the 2012 Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the 2013 Kenyon Review Young Writer’s Workshop. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Postscript Journal.

 

Rebecca Lawton’s work has been published in Orion, THEMA, Shenandoah, Sierra, and many other journals. Her essay collection about the whitewater guiding life, Reading Water: Lessons from the River (Capital), was a San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area Bestseller and ForeWord Nature Book of the Year finalist. Her other books include a novel, Junction, Utah (van Haitsma); a photo-essay with photographer Geoff Fricker, Sacrament: Homage to a River (Heyday); and the forthcoming story collection, Steelies and Other Endangered Species (Little Curlew). Her honors include the Ellen Meloy Fund Award for Desert Writers and Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

 

Michele Leavitt’s poetry and prose appear most recently in The Journal, Umbrella, So to Speak, Mezzo Cammin, The Tower Journal, Passager, and Per Contra. She was the winner of the Ohio State University’s 2010 William Allen Award for creative nonfiction, a finalist for the 2011 Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist in the 2013 Discovery/Boston Review competition. A high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, and former trial attorney, she now teaches in the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities at Unity College in Maine.

 

Lisa Mangini holds an MFA from Southern Connecticut State University. She is the winner of the 2011 Connecticut Poetry Prize, and was named a semifinalist for the 2012 Codhill Press Chapbook Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review, Knockout, Stone Highway Review, American Journal of Nursing, Louisiana Literature, and others. She is the founding editor of Paper Nautilus, and teaches English composition and creative writing at handful of colleges across Connecticut. 

 

Ann E. Michael's collection Water-Rites was published in 2012 by Brick Road Poetry Press; her poems and essays have appeared in many venues over the past 25 years, including in four solo chapbooks and on her blog. She is Writing Coordinator at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.

 

Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Moon City Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Quotable, Crab Creek Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and elsewhere. He’s a Pushcart nominee, winner of the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award from Southern Indiana Review, and winner of the 2013 Literal Latte Poetry Award.

 

Beverly Ress combines ideas found in both science and art in her pursuit of contemporary memento mori. Her drawings have been shown at Liber Mundi in Antwerp, Belgium, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Arkansas Arts Center, and The Katzen Museum. In 2013, her work was included in group exhibits at The Kentler International Drawing Space, as well as at the Schema Projects in Brooklyn. Ress has received three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and a United States Artists project grant. She is a 2013/14 Artist/Scholar in Residence at George Washington University, Washington, DC.

 

Francesca Samsel is a visual artist who uses her background in printmaking and public art to create installation videos on large scale tiled displays addressing current environmental issues from a perspective both artistic and scientific. She has just accepted an Assistant Research Faculty Position at the University of Texas at El Paso where she has been working with Dr. Craig Tweedie on work based on his climate research in the Arctic and New Mexico Desert.  Work starts soon with the research visualization team at Los Alamos National Labs.

 

Phillip Gregory Spotswood was born in Mobile, AL. He received his BA from the University of Alabama in English and Creative Writing in May 2013. Currently he lives in Baton Rouge, LA and works for a nonprofit. His work has appeared in SunDog Lit, Between: New Gay Poetry, and others. He is addicted to running in the dark. He is drifting. 

 

Wendy Vardaman (wendyvardaman.com) is the author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press), co-editor of Echolocations, Poets Map Madison, co-editor/webmaster of Verse Wisconsin (versewisconsin.org), and co-founder/co-editor of Cowfeather Press (cowfeatherpress.org). She has a B.S. in Engineering from Cornell University and a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania, and is one of Madison, Wisconsin's two Poets Laureate (2012-2015). She writes reviews, essays, and interviews in addition to poetry. 

 

Andrena Zawinski lives and teaches writing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her 

latest full poetry collection, Something About, received a PEN Oakland Josephine 

Miles Award. Her first collection, Traveling in Reflected Light, won a Kenneth 

Patchen Poetry competition. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor

of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down, an anthology from the Women’s

Poetry Salon she founded and runs. She is Features Editor at Poetry Magazine.com.