Richard Bausch has published nine volumes of short fiction, including, The Selected Stories Of Richard Bausch (Modern Library), Something Is Out There, and Living In the Weather of the World; his tenth, The Fate of Others, will appear in summer 2025. He is also the author of thirteen novels, including Hello to the Cannibals, Peace, and, most recently, Playhouse. He is a recipient of both the PEN/Malamud Award, and the REA Award for his work in short fiction, and he won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his novel Peace. Three full length feature motion pictures have been made from his work. He teaches in the Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California.
George Estreich’s publications include a book of poems, Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body; the Oregon Book Award-winning memoir The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir (2011); and Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories we Tell Ourselves (2019), which NPR’s Science Friday named a Best Science Book of 2019. He also co-edited the late Alison Piepmeier’s Unexpected: Parenting, Prenatal Testing, and Down Syndrome (2021). His essay “Concision: A Sprawl” was chosen by Vivian Gornick for Best American Essays 2023. He lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and teaches in the MFA program at Oregon State University.
David Fowler was a creative director in New York for twenty years. His essays appear in The Threepenny Review, North American Review, Sojournal, and others. He’s legally blind and now lives in Jackson, Mississippi.
Stephen Haines is an MFA graduate of Western Washington University and the former managing editor of Bellingham Review. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review, Invisible City, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle.
Heather Lanier is the author of the poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing (Monkfish Publishing 2023) as well as the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl (Penguin Press 2020), which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Sun, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Longreads, McSweeney’s, Time, and elsewhere. She works as an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, and her TED talk has been viewed three million times and translated into 18 languages. You can subscribe to her Substack, The Slow Take, for free.
Will McMillan is a queer writer born and raised in the untamed wild of the Pacific Northwest. To date, his essays have been featured or will soon be appearing in Craft, The Sun, Bending Genres, and River Teeth, among dozens of others. He has been twice nominated for Best American Essays (listed as a notable in the 2022 edition), as well as a Pushcart Prize and Best Fictions, for which he was a 2023 winner.
Lindsey Pharr lives and writes outside of Asheville, NC. She received her MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. Her work has won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards, received a Pushcart nomination, and has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Southeast Review, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere. For a full list of her published work, see her website www.lindsey-pharr.com.
Suzanne Roberts is the author of Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties; Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel; and Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, National Geographic Traveler, Brevity, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from UNR, teaches for the low residency MFA in Creative writing at UNR-Tahoe, and lives in South Lake Tahoe, California. More information may be found on her website: www.suzanneroberts.net.
Jennifer Taylor-Skinner is a writer and podcaster who lives in Seattle with her family. She studied classical piano at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Her writing has appeared in Litro Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, The Nation, and Today.com.
William Torrey’s work has received support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Longreads, Colorado Review, The Florida Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, The Southeast Review, Washington Square, The North American Review, Salamander, and Boulevard, among many others. A VAP of Rhetoric at Hampden-Sydney College, he lives in Richmond with his wife and sons and is at work on a novel.
Nicole Walker is the author of eight books, most recently Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster and The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet. She has written several essays for The New York Times and is a noted author in several editions of Best American Essays. She is copresident of NonfictioNOW, edits the Crux series at University of Georgia Press and nonfiction at Diagram and teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University.
