Contents
Contributors
Jason Allen writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. For his novel, The East End, National Book Award finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell provided the cover blurb: “Every page is filled with wise insights about social class and the human heart.” Jason has since been nominated for an Edgar Award and the Georgia Author of the Year Award, and his memoir, Boys Without Fathers, will be released in September of 2026. His poetry collection, A Meditation on Fire, is now with Black Lawrence Press, and he has published essays with Potomac Review, Salon, Literary Hub, and The Strand Magazine. Jason teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Wichita State University and lives in Kansas with his sweet rescue dog, Luna.  
M. Anne Avera is a writer of Southern gothic prose and poetry from Auburn, Alabama. Her work has been featured in Waxing + Waning, Third Wednesday, The Awakenings Review, and others. Her debut collection of poetry, Complete and Total Honesty, is now available through Neon Origami Press. You can find her at writeranneavera.ghost.io.
David Axelrod's most recent collection is Skiing with Dostoyevsky: New & Selected Poems. Individual poems have appeared recently in About Place, Hole in the Head Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, and Zocolo. He founded Bear Scratch Press and teaches letterpress printing at the University of Montana. He lives in a former gravel pit outside Missoula, where he holds an 1889 water right and tends a native plants nursery.
Originally from London, UK, Harriet is an MFA Fiction candidate at Temple University. Her work is published or forthcoming in New Letters, Mslexia, Five on the Fifth, and elsewhere. It has been shortlisted by the Irish Writers' Centre Debut Novel Competition and longlisted by the Desperate Literature Prize for Fiction and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Contest. She was a Writing Fellow at the 2026 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.
Iain Britton’s work has been nominated for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection. His poems have been published by Harvard Review, POETRY, The New York Times, Stand, Agenda, New Statesman, Amsterdam Review. The Intaglio Poems was published by Hesterglock Press 2017. A chapbook – Project Constellation - was published by Sampson Low 2022. A new collection by Rufus Books Publishing has just been launched, inspired by the New York photographer Diane Arbus. https://www.facebook.com/iainbrittonpoet/
Daniel Carden Nemo is a writer, poet, and translator. His work has been long-listed for the Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum) and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Common, Atlanta Review, RHINO, Full Stop, Magma Poetry, Sontag Mag, Exchanges, and elsewhere. 
The author of more than 25 books, Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian novelist, poet, short-story writer, literary critic, and essayist. His work has received the Formentor Prize (2018), the Thomas Mann Prize (2018), the Austrian State Prize for Literature (2015), and the Vilenica Prize (2011), among many others, and has been translated into 23 languages. His novel Blinding was published by Archipelago Books in Sean Cotter’s English translation. Solenoid, published by Deep Vellum, won the Dublin Literary Award in 2024 and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. He lives in Bucharest.
Gabriela Denise Frank is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, educator, and winner of the Fern Academy Prize for the essay. Her writing and visual art have appeared in BOMB Magazine, Channel, Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, SAND Journal, DIAGRAM, Northwest Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The author of How to Not Become the Breaking, she serves as creative nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review. www.gabrieladenisefrank.com
Adam Grabowski's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Blackbird, Ninth Letter, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Parent-Writer Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Adam lives in Western Massachusetts where he is the associate poetry editor of The Maine Review.
Kevin Grauke has recently published poems in The Threepenny Review, Ninth Letter, The Louisville Review, The Minnesota Review, and Bayou. He’s the author of the short-story collections Shadows of Men and West of Destry, and a third short-story collection, Bullies & Cowards, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. He teaches at La Salle University and lives in Philadelphia.
Theo Greenblatt's prose, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in Cleaver, The Columbia Journal, The Normal School Online, Tikkun, Harvard Review, and numerous other venues. She is a previous winner of The London Magazine Short Story Competition. Theo holds a PhD in English from the University of Rhode Island and, after many years of teaching composition, now works as a sexual assault victim advocate in Newport, RI. 
A former Associate Professor at McGill University, Thomas Heise is currently an Associate Professor of creative writing and American literature at Pennsylvania State University (Abington). He is the author of Moth; or how I came to be with you again (Sarabande) and Horror Vacui: Poems (Sarabande), as well as The Gentrification Plot: New York and the Postindustrial Crime Novel (Columbia) and Urban Underworlds: A Geography of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture (Rutgers). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Bennington Review, Chicago Review, Santa Monica Review, The Missouri Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Wigleaf, and elsewhere.
Elizabeth Hill was a Finalist in the 2022 Rattle Poetry Contest. She was nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize by Last Stanza Poetry Journal. Her poetry has been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Boomerlit, SAND, and Catamaran, among other journals. She is currently an MFA candidate at VCFA. She is a retired Administrative Law Judge who handled suits involving learning-disabled children and the school system. She lives in Harlem, NYC, with her husband and two irascible cats.
Satoshi Iwai was born and lives in Kanagawa, Japan. He writes poems in English and in Japanese. His English work has appeared in Fairly Tale Review, Newfound, Into the Void, Phantom Drift, Outlook Springs, and elsewhere.
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn
Photo by Samm Smith
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of the full-length collection Girl in a Bear Suit (Elixir Press, 2024) and the e-chapbook Disambiguation (Salamander/Suffolk University, 2024). She’s the winner of the Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander, selected by Stephanie Burt. Recent work has appeared in or is coming soon from swamp pink, Villain Era, The Common, & On the Seawall. Originally from the Boston area, she now lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and serves as the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College. More at https://www.jenjabailyblackburn.com.
Ella Jeffery is an Australian poet, scholar and critic. Her first collection of poems, Dead Bolt, won the Anne Elder Award, given annually to the best debut book of poems by an Australian poet, as well as the Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First Book of Poems. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies including The Kenyon Review, Ambit, Best Australian Poems, Australian Book Review, HEAT and many others. She teaches creative writing at Griffith University in Brisbane.
Ben Jorisch is an author, poet, and philosopher based in New York City. He holds an MFA from the City College of New York and is the author of the poetry collection Electric Barbwire Tomato (2013). Ben writes with a raw, prophetic voice—combining the brutality of lived experience with a cosmic sense of destiny and awakening.
Claire Jean Kim's poems have been published in or are forthcoming in Rising Phoenix Review, Terrain.org, Tiger Moth Review, Anthropocene, Bracken, The Ilanot Review, Ghost City Review, The Summerset Review, Great River Review, TriQuarterly, Anacapa Review, Slipstream Press, Allium, The Lincoln Review, Arc Poetry, Pinch, The American Poetry Journal, North American Review, The Indianapolis Review, Chiron Review, ONE ART, Radar, Diode, The Southampton Review, Poetry Online, and The Missouri Review.  Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2025), Best of the Net (2025), and Best New Poets (2024).
Cristian Leata is an ex-management consultant, now an MSt student in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. His fiction and non-fiction work has been published in Litro, The Frogmore Papers, and others. You can read more of his writing on his Substack: https://cristianleata.substack.com/
Emily K. Lewandowski is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. Her comics have been published in Black Warrior Review and Hobart, and her fiction has been published in Pacifica Review. Recently, she has been listening to Naomi Scott and caring for her sourdough starter, Loaf.
Jane Lockwood is a poet, among other things, from New England. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and is pursuing her MFA in Poetry at New York University, where she is the Managing Editor of the Washington Square Review. In 2022, Jane was awarded an Academy of American Poets University Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in poets.org, Cordite Poetry Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Jane lives in Brooklyn.
Patrick Morgan is a Louisiana writer originally from Watertown, New York.  His poems have appeared in Valiant Scribe and Catholic Poetry Room.  His writings about poetry can be found in We Are Already One: Thomas Merton's Message of Hope: Reflections to Honor His Centenary (Fons Vitae), The Pocket Instructor: Literature (Princeton University Press), and The Pocket Instructor: Writing (Princeton University Press).
Jenna Murray is a poet and educator based in New York City. Her poetry has appeared in Barrelhouse, Four Way Review, Poets.org, Zócalo Public Square, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Catalina Páez & Seumas MacManus Award from The Academy of American Poets, the Collie Hoffman Prize, and the Thomas Hunter Fellowship from Hunter College, where she received her MFA.
Katrina Naomi’s fourth poetry collection, Battery Rocks (Seren, 2024), won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors, the Holyer an Gof award for Poetry, and was recommended in The Guardian. Previous collections have won an Authors’ Foundation Award and Saboteur Award. She is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize and has twice been highly commended in the Forward Prize. Katrina’s poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, The Verb, Open Country and Poetry Please, and in The TLS, The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2025, Katrina published the pamphlet dance as if (Verve). Katrina performs her poetry internationally. Before poetry, Katrina worked in human rights. She has a PhD from Goldsmiths and tutors for Arvon and the Poetry School. Katrina lives in Cornwall  www.katrinanaomi.co.uk
A proud keychain collector, Sreeja Naskar lives in India and writes poems that have somehow made their way into The Best of the Net Anthology, ONE ART, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Wise Owl and Temz Review.  She is unsociable by design and is currently busy ignoring her actual responsibilities. Please do not look for her on social platforms, as she isn't there.
NZ poet James Norcliffe has published twelve collections of poetry including Shadow Play (2013), Dark Days at the Oxygen Café (VUP, 2016), Deadpan (Otago University Press, 2019) and Letter to Oumuamua (Otago University Press, 2023). His Selected Poems: A Day Like No Other was published earlier this year by Otago University Press. In 2022, he was awarded the NZ Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in poetry.
Garrett Phelan is the author of the chapbook Outlaw Odes (Antrim House) and the micro-chapbooks Unfixed Marks and Standing where I am (Origami Poem Project). His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Harpy Hybrid, Slipstream, Potomac Review, Connecticut River Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Third Wednesday. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He has taught poetry in a variety of locations, most recently in a maximum-security prison in Connecticut. 
Author of two book-length narrative poems: The Adventure and Happiness (both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections of shorter poems: A Poverty of Words, (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and The Liberator (Survision Books, 2024). Frederick Pollack has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. www.frederickpollack.com. 
Marion Röst lives and works in The Hague. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She has always combined studio work with teaching art and design at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Following numerous solo and group exhibitions featuring her graphic art, she has focused on painting since 2012. You can view the development of her work, from her early pieces up to her recent exhibition in May 2026, on www.marionrost.nl. 
Diane Sahms, native Philadelphian, former Ms. Roxborough, three times city gymnastic champion at Roxborough High School, is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently, —of an octopus: an archite|x|tural awareness of words, Carbonation Press, 2026. She was awarded first place in Judith Stark’s Poetry Contest; Partisan Press’s Working People’s Poetry Contest; and received a poetry grant from AEVentures Foundation. Published in North American Review, The Northern Virginia Review, Abstract Magazine TV, Sequestrum Journal of Literature & Arts, Chiron Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The New Verse News, #Ranger Magazine, Amsterdam Review, addanomadd, the Zen Space, & elsewhere. She’s Poetry Editor at North of Oxford, worked as Contract Specialist for the United States government, and as a high school English teacher. Resides in Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA), where she raised three children and is a grandmother. 
Carla Schwartz lives half the time in the greater Boston area, and the other half on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee. Her poems have appeared in her collections, including Signs of Marriage, and she has received the 2026 New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize. Learn more at  https://carlapoet.com, or on social media @cb99videos. Recent curations: Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Cider Press Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, Rattle Magazine, Pork Belly, and Silver Birch. 
David Sergeant has published two collections and a pamphlet of poetry, as well as two books of literary criticism, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland, the Forward Book of Poetry, and elsewhere. He currently lives and works in Devon, England.
Alina Ștefănescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, November 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as editor, reviewer, and critic for various journals and is currently working on a novel-like creature. My Heresies, a poetry collection, was published by Sarabande in late April 2025. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.
Ifera Tagatia is an Indian writer and artist drawn to the human condition and the importance of hope shaped by an early life of survival. Her work draws on surrealist and symbolic explorations of the human psyche, existentialism, feminism, and her own experiences.
Angela Townsend is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, twenty-one-time Best of the Net nominee, and the winner of The Iowa Review’s Tim McGinnis Award and West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Five Points, Fourth Genre, JMWW, The Offing, SmokeLong Quarterly, trampset, and Witness. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Vassar College. 
The author of essays in The New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue, and NPR, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink. Literary magazines that have published her work include The Manifest Station, Halfway Down the Stairs, Stillpoint Arts Quarterly, Tiny Molecules, and Kitchen Table Quarterly. She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).