Joseph Eastburn
Joseph Eastburn earned a master’s degree in Professional Writing from USC, where he taught for ten years. His writing has appeared in Reed Magazine, Sliver of Stone, Slow Trains, The Tower Journal, Sand Hill Review, The Sun Magazine, and Hobo Pancakes. His first novel “Kiss Them Good-Bye” was published by Morrow in 1993 and will be brought back in paper and eBook by HarperCollins in February, 2016. He is writing a full-length novel on Twitter, The Summer of Love and Death.
Xavier Vega
Xavier Vega grew up on a strawberry farm in Plant City, Florida as the child of Mexican immigrants. He moved to Tampa and earned a B.A. in English at University of South Florida where he was published in Thread Literary Inquiry. His work has since been featured Apeiron Review, where he later became a slush reader, The Bangalore Review, Mandala Journal, and Yellow Medicine Review, where he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Xavier’s photography will soon be featured in Raven Chronicles. He currently resides in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Levi Andrew Noe
Levi Andrew Noe was born and raised in Denver, CO. He is a writer, a yogi, an entrepreneur, and an amateur oneironaut. Levi won first prize in 2011 and 2013 in Spirit First’s international poetry competition. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Harpoon Review, Connotation Press, Litro Magazine, 101 Words, Twisted Vine, Birdy, River Poets Journal, Elephant Journal, and Japan Travel, among others. He is the editor in chief and founder of the podcast Rocky Mountain Revival, Audio Art Journal.
Monique Zamir
Monique just completed her MFA in poetry at Oklahoma State University and has received an honorable mention from the Academy of American Poets Scholarship for her poem, “Even the Stone Will Keep” and an honorable mention from the Marye Lynn Cummings Endowed Scholarship for a collection of poems. Her poetry has been published in MOJO/Mikrokosmos, Lunch Ticket – Amuse Bouche, Gravel Magazine, Josephine Quarterly, and The Light Ekphrastic. Born and raised in New York, Monique lives in Austin where she works for a super cool startup.
S. Frederic Liss
Liss, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize sponsored by University of Georgia Press, has published or has forthcoming 38 short stories and has received numerous awards and other forms of recognition for his short fiction including The Florida Review Editor’s Award for Fiction; James Still Prize for Short Fiction sponsored by Wind; Midnight Sun Award for Fiction sponsored by Permafrost; Third prize in the Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction; Finalist for the Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction sponsored by Carve Magazine; and Honorable Mention in the New Letters Literary Award for Fiction and the Glimmer Train June, 2014 Fiction Open. Liss has also been published in The Saturday Evening Post, The South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, Dogwood, The Worcester Review, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. In addition, Liss was a finalist in the Bakeless Prize Competition sponsored by Middlebury College and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Liss earned a MFA from Emerson College, Boston, MA and was the recipient of a Grant-in-Aid in Literature from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Boston, MA where he leads a workshop in writing fiction.
Ananya Kumar-Banerjee
Not your typical teenage tea-drinker, Ananya Kumar-Banerjee is a 17-year-old lover of lyricallity. She currently resides in New York City and attends Horace Mann School. Ananya’s favourite book is “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. She is a devotee of melancholy endings; she has never found happy endings particularly profound. Ananya plans to continue writing in the future.
Laurin DeChae
Laurin DeChae is a M.F.A. candidate for poetry at the University of New Orleans, where she acts as the associate editor for Bayou Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Cleaver Magazine, burntdistrict, S/WORD, Rose Red Review, Rust + Moth, Really System and Star*Line.
Mark J. Mitchell
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologiesIt has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. A full-length collection, “Lent 1999,” was ,just released by Leaf Garden Press. His chapbook, “Three Visitors” has recently been published by Negative Capability Press. “Artifacts and Relics,” another chapbook, was just released from Folded Word and his novel, “Knight Prisoner,” was recently published by Vagabondage Press and a another novel, “A Book of Lost Songs” is coming soon from Wild Child Publishing. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster.