Issue 161 Contributors

Paul Riker
Paul Riker was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a staff writer for the fledgling cultural blog National Ave, and has previously served as the editor-in-chief of its sister site Sherman Ave, a satirical news website at Northwestern University. He resides in Chicago.

Christopher S. Bell
Christopher S. Bell is twenty-nine years of age. He has been writing and releasing literary and musical works through My Idea of Fun since 2008. His sound projects include Emmett and Mary, Technological Epidemic, C. Scott and the Beltones, and Fine Wives. My Idea of Fun is an art and music collective based out of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Christopher’s work has recently been published in the Broadkill Review, Madison Review, Red Rock Review, Mobius, Gesture, and on Fringelit.com. He was also a contributor to Impression of Sound.

Tom Montag
Tom Montag is most recently the author of “In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013,” as well as “Middle Ground,” “Curlew: Home,” “Kissing Poetry’s Sister,” “The Idea of the Local,” and “The Big Book of Ben Zen.” Recent poems will be found at Architrave Press, Atticus Review, Blue Heron Review, The Broken City, The Chaffin Journal, Digital Papercut, Foliate Oak, Fox Cry, Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Hummingbird, Little Patuxent Review, The Magnolia Review, Mud Season Review, On the Rusk, Plainsong, Portage, Red Fez, Riding Light Review, South 85, Split Rock, Sand, Stoneboat, Third Wednesday, Torrid Literature, Town Creek Poetry, and Verse-Virtual. He blogs as The Middlewesterner and serves as Managing Editor of the Lorine Niedecker Monograph Series, What Region?

Caroline Tsai
Caroline Tsai is a junior in high school. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Mimesis, her school literary magazine, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Untitled Newspaper. She has been recognized by the Scholastics Art and Writing Awards on a national level, and last year, her personal essay was published in The Best Teen Writing Anthology of 2014. This summer, she plans to attend the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop, and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Caroline enjoys NPR, traveling, and Jane Austen.

Lee Todd Lacks
Lee Todd Lacks is a mixed-media artist, music therapist, and clinical counselor, who seeks to blur the distinctions between rants, chants, anecdotes, and anthems. His experience of living with significant vision and hearing deficits often informs his work, which is forthcoming in Liquid Imagination, Clockwise Cat, and Tincture Journal. He currently resides in South Portland, Maine, where he shares his life with his wife and young son.

Leah Burbank
Leah Burbank studied photography and sculpture at Portland School of Art. She is inspired by the human form, especially in the expressions and features of the face. For “Inert Passes,” Leah sought to render Dr. Beek’s unmanageable emotions in caricature.

Tiffany McDaniel
Tiffany McDaniel is an Ohio native. Tiffany’s first novel, “The Summer That Melted Everything,” will be published in Summer 2016 by St Martins Press (USA), Scribe (UK & Commonwealth), Signatuur (Dutch translation).

Bryan Crumpley
Bryan Crumpley is a Chicago area writer who spends his time writing, reading, and growing a beard. Bryan Crumpley is also the managing editor and founder of Dali’s Lovechild Literary Magazine. Bryan has previously had pieces published in Johnny America, Quail Bell Literary Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, and Dali’s Lovechild.