Jessica Bordoni is from Ithaca, New York. Currently, she is a senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington finishing an English degree in literary studies. Jessica will go on to receive her master’s degree in Creative Writing. This is her first publication.

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author, he thinks (some of them are small and quick and hard to see in the underbrush), of 13 books of essays, poems, nonfiction, and fiction, notably the sprawling Oregon novel Mink River. Among the peculiar honors which have come his way and confused him utterly is the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which still makes him laugh, although he got a free trip to New York City out of that, with a terrific dinner in a great jazz club, that was fun. His greatest accomplishment is that a small riveting woman said yeah (not yes) when he proposed marriage, that the Coherent Mercy then sent them three children from the sea of the stars, and that he made an all-star team in a really tough league in Boston, guys drove to the basket in that league, they lost fingers, man. See him after class for details.

Katie Fallon is the author of Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011), a finalist for the 2012 Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. Her nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She has taught writing at Virginia Tech and West Virginia University, and co-founded the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia. Her first word was “bird.”

Bettye Kearse is a pediatrician and writer living in the Boston area. Among her most rewarding experiences as a physician have been traveling to China on behalf of Wide Horizons for Children, an international adoption agency, and serving on the board of directors of From Roots to Wings, a community-based organization for grandparents and the grandchildren they are raising. Her commentary, “Our Family Tree Searches for Branches” appeared in the Op Ed section of the Boston Herald. She is currently working on a series of children’s picture books and completing a memoir, The Other Madisons: An African-American Griotte’s Quest to Redefine Her Lineage from a Founding Father.

Daniel W. Lehman was a working journalist for fifteen years and recalls that the subjects of his nonfiction lived lives outside his texts and frequently gave him hell. Most of his academic writing (Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction Over the Edge, John Reed and the Writing of Revolution) tries to honor that memory. In recent years Lehman has traveled widely in Africa and has written essays about South African literature and film.

Mark Liebenow is the author of four books, most recently Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite, which won the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and was published by the Univ. of Nebraska Press. His essays, poems, and critical reviews have appeared in journals like the Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. His nonfiction work has won the Chautauqua and Literal Latte awards, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2012.

Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining town of 200 people in the Daniel Boone National Forest. He is the author of Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and The Good Brother. Chris has published over 70 stories and essays, including appearances in the New York Times, Esquire, GQ, and National Public Radio. He has received awards from the Mississippi Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the NEA, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Granta Magazine included him in their list of the “Top 20 Young American Writers.” He wrote screenplays for HBO’s “True Blood” and “Treme,” Showtime’s “Weeds,” and TV pilots for Fox, Lions Gate and CBS. His TV work was nominated for an Emmy. He lives in rural Lafayette County and teaches at the University of Mississippi.

Beth Peterson lives and teaches in Columbia, MO. She has an MA from Wheaton College and an MFA from the University of Wyoming. She’s currently working on a book of essays set on glaciers, volcanoes and other disappearing landscapes.

Aaron Poor‘s writing has appeared in Variations and Timberline. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Idaho and is working on a memoir. He lives in Oregon.

Seth Sawyers‘ writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, Fugue, Phoebe, The Baltimore Sun, The Rumpus, The Morning News, and The Millions. He has recently completed a memoir about growing up skinny and wild in Appalachia, and is finishing a novel about a ten-foot-tall office worker who discovers there is another like him. He teaches writing at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is an editor at Baltimore Review. He has an MFA from Old Dominion University and was a Tennessee Williams scholar in fiction at the 2013 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Debie Thomas holds an MFA from The Ohio State University, and her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review and Slate Magazine. She was a 2012 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She lives with her family in Palo Alto, California, and is currently working on a memoir about arranged marriage.

Helen Wallace teaches poetry and nonfiction at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House (Ashland Poetry Press), won the Richard Snyder Prize and a 2008 Florida Book Award.

Michelle Webster-Hein writes and teaches in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she lives with her husband and daughter. You can find her work (now or soon) in upstreet, Midwestern Gothic, Ruminate Magazine and Perigee, among other places. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.