ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Josh Bell teaches workshops at Harvard and is the recipient of an NEA grant. He is the author of the novel The Houseboat Veronica and two books of poetry, No Planets Strike and Alamo Theory. He has stories forthcoming in Fence, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Greensboro Review.
Amy Benson is the author of two books: Seven Years to Zero (Dzanc Books, 2017), winner of the Dzanc Books Nonfiction Prize, and The Sparkling-Eyed Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), chosen for Bread Loaf’s Bakeless Prize. She teaches writing at Rhodes College in Memphis.
A. J. Bermudez is a screenwriter, professor, and author of the book Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. Her writing has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Boulevard, Story, and elsewhere. She’s a recipient of the Diverse Voices Award, the PAGE International Screenwriting Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship.
Beto Caradepiedra is the son of Panamanian immigrants, an inheritance he explores in his fiction. His stories have appeared in Pleiades, Callaloo, Northwest Review, Huizache, and other journals. He is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA Program in Fiction and is a recipient of a Fine Arts Work Center Scholars award. Beto resides in New York City with his wife and two children and is at work on a collection of short stories set in Panama and New York.
Steve Chang is a Taiwanese writer, educator, and MacDowell Fellow from the San Gabriel Valley, California. His work appears in Epiphany, Guernica, J Journal, North American Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. He edits fiction at Okay Donkey Mag.
Alice Cone teaches creative writing and grammar at Kent State University, where she also has worked for the Wick Poetry Center, as both teaching artist and programming assistant. She has led workshops for students in public schools, veterans at a homeless shelter, seniors in a retirement home, and providers at a hospital. Her poetry chapbooks include As If a Leaf Could Be Preserved and Shattering into Blossom; her latest novel (unpublished) is The Trickster Center.
An American with roots in the Caribbean and upper Midwest, Susan DeFreitas is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won a Gold IPPY Award, as well as the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin, a finalist for the Foreword INDIES. Her work has been featured in the Writer’s Chronicle, LitHub, Story, Daily Science Fiction, Oregon Humanities, 34th Parallel, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Emma Copley Eisenberg’s work has appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Esquire, Guernica, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. She is author of the novel Housemates and the hybrid nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia. A resident of Philadelphia, she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
Marie Goyette earned her MFA from University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she won the Graduate Prize in Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in North American Review, Feminist Studies, and Southeast Review, among others. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and is at work on a novel.
Jaime Grechika is a queer writer, single mother and amateur beekeeper. She received her BA from Middlebury College and her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She has been published in the Sextant Review, Harper’s Ferry Review, Ironhorse, Herstry and in Writing x Writers. She was runner up for the Red Hen Press Quill Manuscript Prose Award 2021. She lives with her two children in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jessie Li is a writer and editor from Hong Kong and Virginia. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. She is an incoming Fiction Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Elmo Lum’s short stories have appeared in a variety of print and online publications including Narrative, the New England Review, Web Conjunctions, and (a number of years ago) StoryQuarterly. To get by he continues regular work in San Francisco, but has completed a novel and is working on additional projects.
Tim Lynch is a Delawarean whose writing appears or is forthcoming in Broken Antler Magazine, Cotton Xenomorph, Vinyl, and other fine publications. Interviews with poets appear in The Adroit Journal and Tell Tell Poetry, and his first screenplay was a semifinalist for the 2020 ScreenCraft Horror Competition.
Rosalind Margulies is a writer and recent college graduate currently puttering around the PNW. She has work published or upcoming in EPOCH, Epiphany, Hobart, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books. Four of her stories have been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, including “Thunderstruck,” first published in StoryQuarterly.
Xavier John Richardson is a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellow and a Callaloo Fellow. Companion pieces appear in Joyland and Apogee. His fiction and further nonfiction is forthcoming or appears in Five Points, The Idaho Review, Harpur Palate, Apiary, and others.
June Sanchez lives and works in New Orleans’ French Quarter. When she is not taking long walks, consuming excessive quantities of seafood, or doing botched home repairs on her 200-year-old apartment, she enjoys writing in her neighborhood coffee shop. Born a Pennsylvanian, she received her BA in English and economics from Franklin & Marshall College.
Laura Steadham Smith’s short stories have appeared in the North American Review, Pleiades, and Post Road, among other magazines. Best American Short Stories named her story “Underwater” in its Distinguished Stories of 2021. She currently lives in southwest Alabama, where she teaches literature to high school students. She is at work on a novel.
Julie Teixeira is a high school English teacher. She is an MFA candidate at Southern Connecticut State University. She lives in Salem, Connecticut with her husband and two daughters.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including two novels, two story collections, a graphic novel, and a memoir. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Harper’s, the Paris Review, the New York Times, Granta, McSweeney’s, and others.
Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House. Her first novel, Bitter Texas Honey, inspired by her story in this issue, will be published by Dutton in the spring of 2025. She lives in Austin with her husband, two sons, and one cat.
Born and raised in China, trained at the university there to be a propagandist, Zhenglong Yang came to America after 12 years of serving as a host in a state-owned TV station. He writes in English, his adopted language. He is an MFA candidate at the New Writers Project, UT Austin.
Jake Zucker’s short stories have appeared in Story, West Branch, Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review, and he’s received residencies and awards from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Keller Estate, and the Purdue University Libraries and College of Liberal Arts. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and he’s at work on a novel about distance running and white-collar crime.
Josh Bell teaches workshops at Harvard and is the recipient of an NEA grant. He is the author of the novel The Houseboat Veronica and two books of poetry, No Planets Strike and Alamo Theory. He has stories forthcoming in Fence, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Greensboro Review.
Amy Benson is the author of two books: Seven Years to Zero (Dzanc Books, 2017), winner of the Dzanc Books Nonfiction Prize, and The Sparkling-Eyed Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), chosen for Bread Loaf’s Bakeless Prize. She teaches writing at Rhodes College in Memphis.
A. J. Bermudez is a screenwriter, professor, and author of the book Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award and a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist. Her writing has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Boulevard, Story, and elsewhere. She’s a recipient of the Diverse Voices Award, the PAGE International Screenwriting Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship.
Beto Caradepiedra is the son of Panamanian immigrants, an inheritance he explores in his fiction. His stories have appeared in Pleiades, Callaloo, Northwest Review, Huizache, and other journals. He is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA Program in Fiction and is a recipient of a Fine Arts Work Center Scholars award. Beto resides in New York City with his wife and two children and is at work on a collection of short stories set in Panama and New York.
Steve Chang is a Taiwanese writer, educator, and MacDowell Fellow from the San Gabriel Valley, California. His work appears in Epiphany, Guernica, J Journal, North American Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. He edits fiction at Okay Donkey Mag.
Alice Cone teaches creative writing and grammar at Kent State University, where she also has worked for the Wick Poetry Center, as both teaching artist and programming assistant. She has led workshops for students in public schools, veterans at a homeless shelter, seniors in a retirement home, and providers at a hospital. Her poetry chapbooks include As If a Leaf Could Be Preserved and Shattering into Blossom; her latest novel (unpublished) is The Trickster Center.
An American with roots in the Caribbean and upper Midwest, Susan DeFreitas is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won a Gold IPPY Award, as well as the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin, a finalist for the Foreword INDIES. Her work has been featured in the Writer’s Chronicle, LitHub, Story, Daily Science Fiction, Oregon Humanities, 34th Parallel, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Emma Copley Eisenberg’s work has appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Esquire, Guernica, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. She is author of the novel Housemates and the hybrid nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia. A resident of Philadelphia, she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.
Marie Goyette earned her MFA from University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she won the Graduate Prize in Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in North American Review, Feminist Studies, and Southeast Review, among others. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and is at work on a novel.
Jaime Grechika is a queer writer, single mother and amateur beekeeper. She received her BA from Middlebury College and her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She has been published in the Sextant Review, Harper’s Ferry Review, Ironhorse, Herstry and in Writing x Writers. She was runner up for the Red Hen Press Quill Manuscript Prose Award 2021. She lives with her two children in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jessie Li is a writer and editor from Hong Kong and Virginia. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. She is an incoming Fiction Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Elmo Lum’s short stories have appeared in a variety of print and online publications including Narrative, the New England Review, Web Conjunctions, and (a number of years ago) StoryQuarterly. To get by he continues regular work in San Francisco, but has completed a novel and is working on additional projects.
Tim Lynch is a Delawarean whose writing appears or is forthcoming in Broken Antler Magazine, Cotton Xenomorph, Vinyl, and other fine publications. Interviews with poets appear in The Adroit Journal and Tell Tell Poetry, and his first screenplay was a semifinalist for the 2020 ScreenCraft Horror Competition.
Rosalind Margulies is a writer and recent college graduate currently puttering around the PNW. She has work published or upcoming in EPOCH, Epiphany, Hobart, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books. Four of her stories have been reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, including “Thunderstruck,” first published in StoryQuarterly.
Xavier John Richardson is a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellow and a Callaloo Fellow. Companion pieces appear in Joyland and Apogee. His fiction and further nonfiction is forthcoming or appears in Five Points, The Idaho Review, Harpur Palate, Apiary, and others.
June Sanchez lives and works in New Orleans’ French Quarter. When she is not taking long walks, consuming excessive quantities of seafood, or doing botched home repairs on her 200-year-old apartment, she enjoys writing in her neighborhood coffee shop. Born a Pennsylvanian, she received her BA in English and economics from Franklin & Marshall College.
Laura Steadham Smith’s short stories have appeared in the North American Review, Pleiades, and Post Road, among other magazines. Best American Short Stories named her story “Underwater” in its Distinguished Stories of 2021. She currently lives in southwest Alabama, where she teaches literature to high school students. She is at work on a novel.
Julie Teixeira is a high school English teacher. She is an MFA candidate at Southern Connecticut State University. She lives in Salem, Connecticut with her husband and two daughters.
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including two novels, two story collections, a graphic novel, and a memoir. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Harper’s, the Paris Review, the New York Times, Granta, McSweeney’s, and others.
Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House. Her first novel, Bitter Texas Honey, inspired by her story in this issue, will be published by Dutton in the spring of 2025. She lives in Austin with her husband, two sons, and one cat.
Born and raised in China, trained at the university there to be a propagandist, Zhenglong Yang came to America after 12 years of serving as a host in a state-owned TV station. He writes in English, his adopted language. He is an MFA candidate at the New Writers Project, UT Austin.
Jake Zucker’s short stories have appeared in Story, West Branch, Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review, and he’s received residencies and awards from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Keller Estate, and the Purdue University Libraries and College of Liberal Arts. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and he’s at work on a novel about distance running and white-collar crime.