Justin Heckert’s nonfiction stories have appeared in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Indianapolis Monthly, Grantland, ESPN The Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Journal, Oxford American, and Atlanta, among other publications; one of those stories was recently anthologized in the collection Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. He has twice been named Writer of the Year by the City and Regional Magazine Association. Heckert lives near downtown Indianapolis with his wife, Amanda, who is the editor-inchief of Indianapolis Monthly, and their dog, Cooper.
Jonathan Hiskes works in communications at the University of Washington. He is a father, a husband, a lazy gardener, a wistful hiker, and a former staff writer at Grist, Sustainable Industries, and the Brown County (Ind.) Democrat. His writing has appeared in The Sun, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Books & Culture, The Other Journal, The Mennonite, Geez, Portland Business Journal, Seattle Weekly, and elsewhere.
Abriana Jetté is an internationally published poet, essayist, and educator from Brooklyn, New York. She earned an MFA from Boston University, where she was a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow, and an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature from Hofstra University, where she graduated with distinction. Her work has appeared in The Iron Horse Literary Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Moth, and many other places, and she is the editor of 50 Whispers: Poems by Extraordinary Women, which debuted as a #1 best-seller in women’s poetry. She teaches for St. John’s University and the City University of New York.
Courtney Kersten’s essays has previously appeared in DIAGRAM, The Masters Review, and Sweet. She currently studies at the University of Idaho’s MFA program in Creative Writing.
Judith Kitchen is the author of four collections of essays (most recently The Circus Train, Ovenbird Books), a novel, a collection of poetry, and a critical study of William Stafford. In addition, she edited or co-edited three collections of short nonfiction pieces for W. W. Norton (with another collection forthcoming entitled Brief Encounters), an anthology of poetry (The Poets Guide to the Birds with Ted Kooser), and a collection of literary interviews. What Persists, a selection of thirty years of her Georgia Review poetry reviews, will be released soon from University of Georgia Press. Her awards include a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Lillian Fairchild Award, and the S. Mariella Gable Award. She served as judge for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Nonfiction Award, the Pushcart Prize in poetry, the Oregon Book Awards, and the Bush Foundation Fellowships, among others. She lived in Port Townsend, WA, until her death in November 2014.
In spring of 2014, C. Levison McGuire served as the writer-in-residence for Croatia’s Zvona i Nari Library and Literary Retreat and Serbia’s Balkankult. Her work has appeared in Redivider, Ninth Letter, and Passages North, and she is currently at work on a collection of essays.
Jennifer Lunden’s lyric essay “The Butterfly Effect” won first prize in the Creative Nonfiction animal issue (Winter 2011), went on to win a Pushcart Prize, and later was anthologized in True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Her work has also appeared in Orion, Wigleaf, and the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. An earlier draft of “Evidence” was a Maine Literary Awards finalist. Read her blog at www.jenniferlunden.com.
Jacqueline Lyons is the author of the poetry collection The Way They Say Yes Here (Hanging Loose Press) and the chapbook Lost Colony (Dancing Girl Press). She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, the Peace Corps Writers Best Poetry Book Award, the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, Utah Arts Council Awards in Poetry and Nonfiction, and a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship in Nonfiction. Her nonfiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and cited in Best American Essays.
Mark H. Massé (www.markmasse.com) is author of two books of literary journalism: Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm’s Way (2011) and Inspired to Serve: Today’s Faith Activists (2004). He has also published two novels and is completing a third work of fiction on campus crime. A longtime freelancer, Massé has written for multiple national and international periodicals. In 2012, he won the Excellence in Journalism Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association for “Transformer,” a chapter from his book Trauma Journalism, which originally appeared in River Teeth in fall 2009. Massé is a professor of journalism at Ball State University.
Jan Shoemaker’s essays have appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Sun, Fourth Genre, Colorado Review, Sufi Journal, and Make Magazine. She lives in Michigan with her good husband, who pours her wine and builds her fires, and an ongoing succession of wayward dogs.
John Tormey works in the training department for the Massachusetts commuter railroad. He lives with his wife and two young sons in Taunton, MA. He received his MFA from Boston University in 2011 and is at work on a collection of essays and a novel.
Tarn Wilson is the author of the recently published memoir The Slow Farm about her early years with her hippy parents in the wilds of British Columbia. Her essays appear in Brevity, Defunct, Gulf Stream, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Inertia, Ruminate, South Loop Review, and The Sun, among others. She is a graduate of the Rainier Writing Workshop and lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.
