Contributors’ Notes

Michael S. Begnal’s newest collection is Future Blues, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry this year. His previous collection was Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007). He has also published a chapbook, Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery, 2005). His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Dark Sky, Notre Dame Review, Free Verse, and Avant-Post: The Avant-Garde under “Post-” Conditions (Litteraria Pragensia, 2006). His blog is at www.mikebegnal.blogspot.com.

Liam Callanan is the author of the novels All Saints and The Cloud Atlas and the creator of the Poetry Everywhere animated film series. He lives and writes in Milwaukee and on the Web at liamcallanan.com.

George Eklund has taught creative writing at Morehead State University for twenty years. His work as appeared in The American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, The North American Review, and, most recently, The Iowa Review. His book The Island Blade (ABZ Press) and chapbook Wanting to Be an Element (Finishing Line Press) are forthcoming this fall. Eklund can be found on Facebook on Poems from Willow Drive. He currently resides with painter and poet Laura Eklund in Olive Hill, Kentucky.

V. Jo Hsu is an M.F.A. candidate at Pennsylvania State University, where she also teaches. She has reviews forthcoming in Pleiades and Green Mountains Review. She has worked for Our Stories Literary Journal and Foundry Literary + Media in New York City.

Mat Johnson was born and raised in the Germantown and Mt. Airy sections of Philadelphia. He is the author of the novels Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. He is a faculty member at the University of Houston’s creative writing program.

Lauren Hopkins Karcz is a linguist living in Atlanta, Georgia. Her fiction has won awards through the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).

Brooke Lanier will receive her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in 2011. She earned her B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Since then, she has shown her work in Prague, Rome, The Smithsonian, and various galleries in the United States. Her website is brookelanier.com.

Diana K. Lee’s poetry has appeared in Asian Collections magazine. An editor and actor, she once portrayed Gertrude Stein. She is a native of Austin and a graduate of the University of Texas. She lives in Brooklyn.

Michael Milburn teaches high school English in New Haven, Connecticut. His nonfiction has appeared most recently in New England Review and New Haven Review. His third book of poems, Carpe Something, will appear from Word Press in 2012.

Kristin Prevallet was born in Denver, Colorado, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. Recipient of a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry, she is the author of numerous books, most recently I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time (Essay Press, 2007). She is a hypnotherapist currently working in Manhattan, and is completing a book of essays entitled Writing Is Never by Itself Alone: Practicing Investigative Poetics.

Christopher Schaeffer is an incoming M.F.A. student at Temple University, and received his bachelor’s from Ursinus College in 2010. His work has appeared in Pleiades, Interrobang, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. He has also published two chapbooks. He has been the recipient of two Ursinus Prose Prizes and was a 2008 Summer Fellow in Creative Writing.

Marc Schuster is the author of The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl (Permanent, 2011) and the editor of Small Press Reviews. His fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Weird Tales, Wild River Review, and Slab. His second novel, The Grievers, will be available from The Permanent Press in 2012.

Melissa Slayton is currently a student in the creative writing program at Warren Wilson College. Her work has been published in Warren Wilson publications such as Peal, Kumquat, and An Anthology About Childhood. In 2007, she received a National Council of Teachers of English Writing Award. She received an honorable mention in the 2011 Lyric College Poetry Contest.

Katherine Zlabek recently received her M.F.A. from Western Michigan University, where she won awards for both fiction and poetry. Her work has previously appeared in The Madison Review, JMWW, Oxford Magazine, and the anthology World Lives, Prairie Living. She is currently working on two collections of short stories and pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati.