​

 

Hari Alluri is an award-winning poet, educator, and teaching artist. Along with work in anthologies, journals, and online venues, he is the author of a chapbook, The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel), and a forthcoming collection, The Flayed City (Kaya). Hari immigrated to Vancouver, Coast Salish territories, at age 12, and currently writes in San Diego, Kumeyaay land, where he serves as a co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press and as Editor in Chief at Pacific Review.

​

 

Joe Bartenhagen is a writer and filmmaker from Salt Lake City. Though he's never been published, “The Winter Poem” is his second story to feature a famous and attractive actor. Once, he got the following comment from an editor at McSweeney’s: “I’m not sure that Harrison Ford would be that way."

​

 

Pritha Bhattacharyya is a Bengali-American writer who received her B.A. from Cornell University in 2016. Her work has been recognized by the DC Scholastic Writing Awards and appears or is forthcoming in Rainy Day, Marginalia, Litro Online, Poetry Breakfast, and Plain China: Best Undergraduate Writing. She currently serves as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. To learn more about her work, visit prithabread.wordpress.com.

​

 

Lyrik Courtney is a Black nonbinary Floridian (ca. 1999) who edits poetry for Venus Magazine and acts as the blog editor and interview correspondent for TRACK//FOUR, a magazine for people of color. Their work can be found in various places across the internet (Liminality Mag, Ninth Letter, etc...), but they themselves are most often seen tweeting @lyrik_c.

​

 

Jonathan Louis Duckworth is an MFA student at Florida International University and a reader for the Gulf Stream Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction appears in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, PANK Magazine, Thrice Fiction, Cha, Superstition Review, and elsewhere.

​

 

Safia Elhillo’s first full-length collection, The January Children, is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2017. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, she received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and an MFA in poetry at the New School. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation, Crescendo Literary, and The Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator. In addition to appearing in several journals and anthologies including “The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,” her work has been translated into Arabic and Greek. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology “Halal If You Hear Me.”

 

​

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been featured in The Offing, PEN America, The Feminist Wire, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She received a Pushcart Prize for her poem “I DREAM OF HORSES EATING COPS.” Her most recent collection, THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS, was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in August 2016.

 

​

Hazem Fahmy is a poet and critic from Cairo. He is currently pursuing a degree in Humanities and Film Studies from Wesleyan University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee, HEArt, Mizna, and The Offing. In his spare time, he writes about the Middle East and tries to come up with creative ways to mock Classicism. He makes videos occasionally.

 

​

Vievee Francis is the author of Forest Primeval (Northwestern University Press, 2016), Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University, 2006). Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, textbooks, and anthologies, including Poetry, Waxwing, Best American Poetry 2010, Best American Poetry 2014, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry. She has been a participant in the Cave Canem Workshops and a Poet-in-Residence for the Alice Lloyd Scholars Pro­gram at the University of Michigan and teaches poetry writing in the Cal­laloo Creative Writing Workshop (USA, UK, and Barbados). In 2009 she received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and in 2010, a Kresge Fellowship, and most recently the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She serves as an Associate Editor of Callaloo and an Associate Professor of English at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.

 

​

Kathryn Hargett is a senior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Her work has been recognized by universities and organizations such as Princeton University, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Alabama Writers’ Forum, the UK Poetry Society, and others. She is the editor-in-chief of TRACK//FOUR, a literary magazine for writers and artists of color. Her poetry has been published in or is forthcoming from The Adroit Journal, A-Minor Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, DIALOGIST, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. She is a Chinese-American poet from the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama.

​

​

Philip Harris was born in Hollywood, California but currently lives in San Francisco where he is finishing up his MFA in Fiction. He isn't exactly sure where home is at the moment, but he hopes wherever he lands they have burritos. His work has been published in Transfer, The Los Angeles Review, The Atticus Review, and Vogue UK. He recently finished his first novel.

 

​

Alex Huang is a student at Williams College. Born in California but raised in Shanghai, China, he considers home to be his mother’s cooking. He has almost four years of experience performing spoken word poetry and is a former president of Williams' spoken word poetry club, SpeakFree. His biggest dreams are having an exhibition at the MoMA and owning a dog (one is easier than the other.) You can contact him about any and everything at acp.huang@gmail.com.

 

​

Christina Im is a Korean-American writer and high school student from Portland, Oregon. She was named a 2017 Finalist in Poetry by the National YoungArts Foundation. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in YARN, Words Dance, Strange Horizons, and The Adroit Journal, among others. Her work has been recognized by Hollins University and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. 

 

​

Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit and is a poetry student in University of Michigan's MFA program. His writings have been given homes by The Collagist, The Journal, Word Riot, and The Offing, among others. You can find him online at marlinmjenkins.tumblr.com and @Marlin_Poet. 

 

​

Qistina Khalidah, or more popularly known as 'Qissus,' is a Malaysian-based freelancing illustrator who specializes in abstract art in digital medium. Her art style has been a solid choice for cover illustrations which has managed to attract a variety of clients. She studied illustration in The One Academy of Communication Design and proceeded to pursue her freelancing career after successfully building her portfolio online during her studies.

 

​

Katy Kim is a student. Her work is forthcoming or published in Hermeneutic Chaos, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and has been featured on Verse Daily, among others.

 

​

Kayti Lahsaiezadeh is a well-meaning heathen and writer of poetry. A 2014 alum of the VONA/Voices Workshop, her poems have also appeared in Post Road Magazine, Pea River Journal, and Maudlin House. Born and raised in San Diego, she currently lives and works in Boston. 

 

​

Alex Mediate is a photographer currently living in Los Angeles, CA (originally from Las Vegas, NV). He is attending Otis College of Art and Design on a Presidential Scholarship and is on track to receive a BFA in photography and a minor in advertising design. He has displayed work in numerous galleries and has also done commercial work. His work has been displayed in the Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York, NY), the Jewel Box Gallery (Miami, FL), and the Alios Gallery (Las Vegas, NV). While working on fine art work, Alex also shoots commercially for American Apparel. He either models, styles, or shoots images for American Apparel's social media platforms.

 

​

Catalina Ouyang is a visual artist and writer raised on the East Coast and based in St. Louis. Her visual work, spanning sculpture, video, and various modes of assemblage, has been exhibited nationally. Her writing appears in River Teeth (2017 Pushcart nomination), CURA Literary Magazine (2015 CURA Prize winner), Please Hold Magazine, and Pearl Girl Magazine. She has attended residencies at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY), the OBRAS Foundation (Evora Monte, Portugal) and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL). She holds a BFA from a private university she no longer associates with. (catalinaouyang.com)

 

​

Cynthia Dewi Oka is a poet, mother, and author of Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016). A two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, her poems have appeared online and in print, including in Guernica, Black Renaissance Noire, Painted Bride Quarterly, Dusie, The Wide Shore, The Collapsar, Apogee, Kweli, As Us Journal, Obsidian, and Terrain.org. She is also a contributor to the anthologies Read Women (Locked Horn Press, 2014), Dismantle (Thread Makes Blanket, 2014), and Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines (PM Press, 2016). Cynthia has been awarded the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor’s Prize in Poetry, scholarships from the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) Writing Workshop and Vermont Studio Center, and the Art and Change Grant from Leeway Foundation. An immigrant from Bali, Indonesia, she is based in South Jersey/Philly. Her second book of poems is forthcoming in 2017 from Northwestern University Press.

 

​

Claire Oleson is a student and writer hailing from Grand Rapids Michigan. She’s currently studying English and Creative Writing at Kenyon College. She’s an avid fan of books, bread, and trying to win the hearts of all felines, regardless of how cantankerous they may be. Her work has been published by the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal Limestone, Siblíní Art and Literature journal, Newfound Journal, NEAT Magazine, Werkloos Magazine, and Bridge Eight Magazine, among others.

 

​

Emily Peebles began her undergraduate career at Davidson College, where she studied English and Classics and received the Patricia Cornwell Scholarship for Creative Writing. After a year at Davidson, she took a brief hiatus from formal education to work in the food industry and begin drafting a novel. At twenty-one years old, she finds herself at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, pursuing a double major in Creative Writing and Saxophone Performance. Her current interests include ballet, biscotti, and chamber music. She is still working on that novel.

 

​

Gabriel Ramirez is a Afro-Latinx poet, activist, and teaching artist. Gabriel is a mentor at Urban Word NYC and has received fellowships from The Watering Hole, Willow Books, and Callaloo. You can find his work in various spaces, including Youtube, and in publications like The Volta, Vinyl, WusGood and forthcoming in The Offing, African Voices and ¡MANTECA!: an Anthology of Afro-Latino Poetry (Arte Público Press 2017).

 

​

Anne Riesenberg, an acupuncturist and meditation instructor from Portland, Maine, holds an MFA from Lesley University. Winner of the 2016 Blue Mesa Review nonfiction contest, her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Naugatuck River Review, Monkeybicycle, and Solstice Literary Magazine. She is a founding board member of Hewnoaks Artist Colony in Lovell, Maine.

 

​

Corinne Singer is a student in New York City.  She can be found at http://www.corinnesingerphotography.com/.

 

​

Eleanor Spiess-Ferris is an American symbolist painter cited as a significant surrealist, narrative figurative, and feminist artist. Her numerous visual works display powerful influences of the Spanish and Native American cultures of Northern New Mexico where she grew up.

 

​

Chrysanthemum Tran is an emerging queer and transfeminine Vietnamese American poet and teaching artist in Providence by way of Oklahoma City. In 2016, they became the first trans woman finalist of the Women of the World Poetry Slam. A three-time semifinalist at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, Chrysanthemum won “Best Poet” and “Best Poem” in 2016 and “Pushing the Art Forward” in 2015. A 2016 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam champion and Pink Door Fellow, Chrysanthemum is a two-time member of the Providence national slam team and coaches the Providence youth slam team.  

 

​

Jamie Uy is the Program Director & Co-Founder of Parallel Ink, an international online literary and art publication for youth. She was a Commended Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2012, one of the winning poets in the Cape Farewell/Poetry Society’s SWITCH Challenge in 2014, and a poetry mentee in The Adroit Journal’s Summer 2015 Online Mentorship Program. Her prose was recently recognized in the 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Rattle Young Poets Anthology, Germ Magazine, and Miracle, among other publications. She currently lives in Singapore.

 

​

Candace Williams is Head of Community at a podcasting startup by day. By night and subway ride, she's a poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hyperallergic, Lambda Literary Review, Copper Nickel, and the Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2017), among other places. She’s earned a MA in Elementary Education from Stanford University, a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, and scholarships from Cave Canem. Her first chapbook, Spells for Black Wizards, is a winner of the TAR Chapbook Series and will be published in 2017 (The Atlas Review). You can find her cuddling her pit bull while subtweeting the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (@teacherc).

 

​

Brigitte Wolf was born into a large German family, travelled to England as a young woman, then immigrated to the USA, eventually settling in Chicago. Serious study in art was put aside until her family was grown. Since then, she has increasingly developed her skills in both sculpture and painting. She has thus far studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Noyes Center, Palette and Chisel, and the Evanston Art Center. One finds in her work exploration of the human form, especially in dance and other movement, modulated by varying uses of light and color.

 

​

Alex Zhang is a current undergraduate student at Columbia University from Portage, Michigan. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Rust + Moth, Sierra Nevada Review, Best Teen Writing of 2016, and other publications. He currently serves as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.