Along with two books of travel essays—Guatemalan Journey (University of Texas Press) and Green Dreams: Travels in Central America (Lonely Planet)—Stephen Benz has published essays in Creative Nonfiction, TriQuarterly, Los Angeles Review, and other journals. Two of his essays have been selected for the Best American Travel Writing series. Formerly a writer for Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald, he now teaches professional writing at the University of New Mexico and is on the faculty of the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference.
Jill Christman is the author of Darkroom: A Family Exposure (AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction winner), Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood (Shebooks 2014), and essays in magazines and journals such as Brevity, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Literary Mama, Oprah Magazine, and Brain, Child. She teaches creative nonfiction writing in Ashland University’s low-residency MFA program and at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, writer Mark Neely, and their two children. Visit her at www.jillchristman.com.
Karen Dietrich is the author of The Girl Factory (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). Her writing has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, The Bellingham Review, Specter, and elsewhere. She lives outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and online at karendietrich.net.
Tom Fate is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Beyond the White Noise, a collection of essays, Steady and Trembling, a spiritual memoir, and Cabin Fever, a nature memoir. A regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, his essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, Orion, Iowa Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, and many other journals and anthologies, and they have often aired on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio. He teaches creative writing at College of DuPage in Chicago. Visit him at: www.tomfate.com.
Kerry Folan‘s work has appeared in The Washington Post, Hippocampus, and The Butter, among other publications. She is currently a second-year MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at George Mason University.
Robert Long Foreman is from Wheeling, West Virginia. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared most recently in Copper Nickel, Redivider, Booth, The Utne Reader, Fourth Genre, and the 2014 Pushcart anthology. He is The Cossack Review’s Fiction Editor, and he teaches creative writing and literature at Rhode Island College.
Shannon Huffman Polson is the author of North of Hope: A Daughter’s Arctic Journey as well as essays in Cirque Journal, High Country News, Alaska and Seattle magazines, Huffington Post, and Ruminate Magazine, where her work was given honorable mention in the 2015 VanderMey Prize for Nonfiction. Her current project about mythology, community, and pathfinding is based on her experience as one of the Army’s first women attack helicopter pilots.
Shanley Jacobs’ poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in Blackbird, Gulf Coast, The Helen Burns Poetry Anthology: Best New Voices from the Academy of American Poets University & College Prizes (1998-2009), and Tampa Review. She is a recipient of a Catherine and Joan Byrne Academy of American Poets Prize, a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a 2014 AWP Intro Journals Project Award in Nonfiction. She is an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco and has her MFA in Poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Catalina Ouyang is a visual artist and writer based in St. Louis, where she and her partner enjoy unimaginably cheap rent. She was the recipient of the 2015 CURA Prize for her short story “Third Sister.” Her visual work has been exhibited in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Annapolis, and Florence. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2015. She was most recently an artist-in-residence at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, where she created large sculptures of soft-looking dickheads with cute blue eyes and various long objects shoved into their urethras.
Katherine Robb is a writer and attorney. Her writing has been published in Blue Fifth Review, Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Hobart (online), Jenny, Tincture Journal, New York University Annual Survey of American Law, and Taconic Press. She recently finished her first novel.
Nathan Thornburgh is a former musician, former traveling salesman, and former foreign correspondent with TIME Magazine. He is currently co-founder and CEO of Roads & Kingdoms.
Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and two collections of poetry, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. His third full-length collection of poetry, When We Were Birds, is forthcoming from the University of Arkansas Press in spring of 2016. Wilkins lives with his wife, son, and daughter in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College.
