ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Jonathan Ayala (he/him/él) is a writer from El Paso, Texas and a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso’s MFA program in Creative Writing. He has also studied at the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Macondo Summer Writers’ Workshop. His stories have been published in journals such as Foglifter, Rio Grande Review, and The Acentos Review. In addition to writing fiction, he also works in HIV advocacy and writes “Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism,” a newsletter about art and culture responding to the HIV epidemic.
Nancy Bell is a writer and theatre artist living in St. Louis. She is a professor of theatre at St. Louis University and an MFA candidate in creative writing at Mississippi University for Women. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Terrain, Flyway, The Disappointed Housewife, and Passengers Journal.
Augustine Blaisdell is the author of Women À La Mode: A Memoir of Writing a Book about Feminists in Paris. Her work has been published by Catapult Story, KGB Bar Literary Magazine, The Intentional Muse and supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She received her MFA from Columbia University and is the Founder of The Writers Retreat in the Côte d’Azur. She lives in the South of France with her husband and two children.
Catalina Bode is a writer and educator mostly from Illinois and now lives in Ohio. Her work has been supported by Fulbright, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Hopwood Program, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and as a Ricardo Salinas Scholar. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan and her writing can be found in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.
Montserrat Andrée Carty is a Spanish-American writer, photographer, and the interviews editor for Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first book. Her writing and/or photographs have been published in journals and magazines including Longreads, The Sun, Internazionale, and Bellingham Review.
Michael Deagler is the author of the novel Early Sobrieties, winner of the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award. He lives in Los Angeles.
Patrick Dundon is the author of the chapbook The Conspirators of Pleasure (Sixth Finch Books). His fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Witness, swamp pink, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. His poems have appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, and West Branch, among others. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and lives in Portland, OR where he serves as an editor for the Burnside Review.
Xeni Fragakis earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and has been a contributing participant in fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in The New York Times’ Modern Love column and Jabberwock Review, and she is a winner of the Moth GrandSLAM Championship. She is working on a novel entitled The Girls of Greek Appalachia.
Rachel Heng, the 2025 contest judge, is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, most recently The Great Reclamation (Riverhead, 2023), which won the New American Voices Award and the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, as well as being named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker and TIME. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University and lives in New York City with her family.
Nahal Suzanne Jamir’s writing has been recently published or is forthcoming in journals like Agni Online, Bennington Review, and Ploughshares. She is the author of the story collection In the Middle of Many Mountains (Press 53), and her second story collection, titled American Names, is in progress. Jamir currently lives and teaches creative writing in Florida.
Jing Jian (JJ) was born in Wuhan, China and immigrated to the U.S. at age 13. She studied math at MIT and fiction writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s a graduate of VONA Voices, a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship, and a winner of the Henfield Prize in Fiction in 2020. She’s working on her first novel, Prodigy. She lives in Los Angeles.
Yisol Jo was born and raised in South Korea and the Philippines and later lived and studied in New York City where she received a graduate fellowship from the NYU Creative Writing Program. Her short stories have appeared in Fairlight Books in the UK and Beyond Words Magazine in Germany.
Sophia Laurenzi is a writer from New Jersey. A finalist of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, her work has been published in TIME, The Washington Post, Slate, Wired, Chapter 16, and others. She is at work on a memoir.
Stephanie Macias is a Latinx writer, artist, and musician living in Austin, TX. She received an MFA in fiction from the University of Texas at Austin. Her stories have appeared in Brink, No Tokens, Southern Humanities Review, and Crazyhorse, among others, and have been a finalist for the Jesmyn Ward Prize, longlisted for the DISQUIET Prize, and nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is the managing editor at American Short Fiction.
Anthony Otten lives in Covington, Kentucky. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. His stories have appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, and Jabberwock Review, and he is the recipient of a Dorland Mountain Arts residency. He is currently working on a novel based on his hometown’s history with organized crime.
John Salter is the author of There Will Never Be Another Night Like This, Alberta Clipper, and A Trout in the Sea of Cortez. His short fiction has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, Chattahoochee Review, Hong Kong Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Fargo, North Dakota.
Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer and an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph College. His writing can be found in Copper Nickel, Isele Magazine, BULL, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by VONA, Tin House, Periplus, Hambidge, and Roots. Wounds. Words.
Cyrus Stuvland is a queer and trans writer from north Idaho. They’re working on a memoir about cleanliness, religion, art, and mental health, and the ways in which these values speak to whiteness and working-class identities, particularly in rural Idaho. Their work has appeared in Foglifter Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.
Emily Gray Tedrowe (she/her) is the author of the novels Commuters, Blue Stars, and The Talented Miss Farwell.
Randolph Thomas is the author of a collection of short stories, Dispensations (New Rivers Press, 2014), and a collection of poems, The Deepest Rooms (Silverfish Review Press, 2015). His work has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, River Styx, Cloudbank, and other journals. His story “Gifts” won the 2024 Breakwater Review Fiction Contest.
Jules Wernersbach’s debut novel, Work To Do, will be published by University of Iowa Press in 2026. Their short fiction has been published in Bennington Review, Heavy Feather Review, Juked, and other journals. They are the author of Vegan Survival Guide to Austin and The Swimming Holes of Texas. Jules is the co-owner of Hive Mind Books, a queer independent bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Michael Wolfe was raised in Iowa and has never quite stopped thinking about it. He holds an MFA from Texas State University and lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a freelance editor. His writing has appeared in Phoebe, Bloom, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and an AWP Intro Journals Award. He’s finishing a book of fiction reimagining the life and legacies of queer Iowa artist Grant Wood.
Jonathan Ayala (he/him/él) is a writer from El Paso, Texas and a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso’s MFA program in Creative Writing. He has also studied at the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Macondo Summer Writers’ Workshop. His stories have been published in journals such as Foglifter, Rio Grande Review, and The Acentos Review. In addition to writing fiction, he also works in HIV advocacy and writes “Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism,” a newsletter about art and culture responding to the HIV epidemic.
Nancy Bell is a writer and theatre artist living in St. Louis. She is a professor of theatre at St. Louis University and an MFA candidate in creative writing at Mississippi University for Women. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Terrain, Flyway, The Disappointed Housewife, and Passengers Journal.
Augustine Blaisdell is the author of Women À La Mode: A Memoir of Writing a Book about Feminists in Paris. Her work has been published by Catapult Story, KGB Bar Literary Magazine, The Intentional Muse and supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She received her MFA from Columbia University and is the Founder of The Writers Retreat in the Côte d’Azur. She lives in the South of France with her husband and two children.
Catalina Bode is a writer and educator mostly from Illinois and now lives in Ohio. Her work has been supported by Fulbright, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Hopwood Program, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and as a Ricardo Salinas Scholar. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan and her writing can be found in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.
Montserrat Andrée Carty is a Spanish-American writer, photographer, and the interviews editor for Hunger Mountain. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is working on her first book. Her writing and/or photographs have been published in journals and magazines including Longreads, The Sun, Internazionale, and Bellingham Review.
Michael Deagler is the author of the novel Early Sobrieties, winner of the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award. He lives in Los Angeles.
Patrick Dundon is the author of the chapbook The Conspirators of Pleasure (Sixth Finch Books). His fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Witness, swamp pink, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. His poems have appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, and West Branch, among others. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and lives in Portland, OR where he serves as an editor for the Burnside Review.
Xeni Fragakis earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and has been a contributing participant in fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in The New York Times’ Modern Love column and Jabberwock Review, and she is a winner of the Moth GrandSLAM Championship. She is working on a novel entitled The Girls of Greek Appalachia.
Rachel Heng, the 2025 contest judge, is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, most recently The Great Reclamation (Riverhead, 2023), which won the New American Voices Award and the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, as well as being named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker and TIME. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University and lives in New York City with her family.
Nahal Suzanne Jamir’s writing has been recently published or is forthcoming in journals like Agni Online, Bennington Review, and Ploughshares. She is the author of the story collection In the Middle of Many Mountains (Press 53), and her second story collection, titled American Names, is in progress. Jamir currently lives and teaches creative writing in Florida.
Jing Jian (JJ) was born in Wuhan, China and immigrated to the U.S. at age 13. She studied math at MIT and fiction writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s a graduate of VONA Voices, a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship, and a winner of the Henfield Prize in Fiction in 2020. She’s working on her first novel, Prodigy. She lives in Los Angeles.
Yisol Jo was born and raised in South Korea and the Philippines and later lived and studied in New York City where she received a graduate fellowship from the NYU Creative Writing Program. Her short stories have appeared in Fairlight Books in the UK and Beyond Words Magazine in Germany.
Sophia Laurenzi is a writer from New Jersey. A finalist of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, her work has been published in TIME, The Washington Post, Slate, Wired, Chapter 16, and others. She is at work on a memoir.
Stephanie Macias is a Latinx writer, artist, and musician living in Austin, TX. She received an MFA in fiction from the University of Texas at Austin. Her stories have appeared in Brink, No Tokens, Southern Humanities Review, and Crazyhorse, among others, and have been a finalist for the Jesmyn Ward Prize, longlisted for the DISQUIET Prize, and nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is the managing editor at American Short Fiction.
Anthony Otten lives in Covington, Kentucky. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. His stories have appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, and Jabberwock Review, and he is the recipient of a Dorland Mountain Arts residency. He is currently working on a novel based on his hometown’s history with organized crime.
John Salter is the author of There Will Never Be Another Night Like This, Alberta Clipper, and A Trout in the Sea of Cortez. His short fiction has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, Chattahoochee Review, Hong Kong Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Fargo, North Dakota.
Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer and an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph College. His writing can be found in Copper Nickel, Isele Magazine, BULL, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by VONA, Tin House, Periplus, Hambidge, and Roots. Wounds. Words.
Cyrus Stuvland is a queer and trans writer from north Idaho. They’re working on a memoir about cleanliness, religion, art, and mental health, and the ways in which these values speak to whiteness and working-class identities, particularly in rural Idaho. Their work has appeared in Foglifter Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.
Emily Gray Tedrowe (she/her) is the author of the novels Commuters, Blue Stars, and The Talented Miss Farwell.
Randolph Thomas is the author of a collection of short stories, Dispensations (New Rivers Press, 2014), and a collection of poems, The Deepest Rooms (Silverfish Review Press, 2015). His work has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, River Styx, Cloudbank, and other journals. His story “Gifts” won the 2024 Breakwater Review Fiction Contest.
Jules Wernersbach’s debut novel, Work To Do, will be published by University of Iowa Press in 2026. Their short fiction has been published in Bennington Review, Heavy Feather Review, Juked, and other journals. They are the author of Vegan Survival Guide to Austin and The Swimming Holes of Texas. Jules is the co-owner of Hive Mind Books, a queer independent bookstore and coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Michael Wolfe was raised in Iowa and has never quite stopped thinking about it. He holds an MFA from Texas State University and lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a freelance editor. His writing has appeared in Phoebe, Bloom, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and an AWP Intro Journals Award. He’s finishing a book of fiction reimagining the life and legacies of queer Iowa artist Grant Wood.