Class of 2027
Dylan Ever
Dylan Ever spins stories out of folklore and fables, interweaving critters, creatures, and confused twenty-somethings. In her art she loves exploring combinations of music, visuals, and writing, and can often be found plucking at a guitar, building spaceship-esque synthesizers, or out writing poetry for passersby on her typewriter.
Piper Fitzgerald
Piper Fitzgerald grew up in the Meramec Area of Missouri and attended Saint Louis University to complete her undergraduate degree in English. When she isn’t reading or writing, she is hiking, practicing her photography, watching films, or spending time with her pets.
Shannan Mann
Shannan Mann has been awarded/placed for the Palette Love & Eros Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize, Foster Poetry Prize, Peatsmoke Summer Contest, Frontier Award for New Poets, and the Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize among others. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH, december, & elsewhere. Her essays appear in Tolka Journal, Going Down Swinging, Grain and have been awarded the Alta Lind Cook Prize and Irene Adler Essay Prize. She also translates Sanskrit poetry. At present, she’s working on a magic-realist/horror/humor novel about rageful women, the apocalypse, and conscious frying pans. Personally, she loves reading more than writing. Professionally, she’s part of the Chill Subs team. Spiritually, she is married to Karan Kapoor. Together, they raise their daughter, Anasuya Lilayana, and run the lit mag ONLY POEMS.
Isaac Maxey
Isaac Maxey is from Shawsville, VA. He has a piece upcoming in North American Review. Takes bad photos, calls them candid. Lies to your face.
Nuran Ọládèjì
Nurain Ọládèjì was raised in southwest Nigeria. He holds degrees in the crop sciences and has worked as an agroecological researcher before pledging his fealty to the letters. His chapbook, Home Is a Heart That Flees, was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for inclusion in the 2024 New-Generation African Poets (Kumi)chapbook box set. He has published poetry and fiction in Poetry Wales, Transition, Olongo Africa, Acumen, and elsewhere.
Maria Psarakis
Maria Psarakis is a writer from Virginia. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Political Science from the University of Richmond.
William Shaw
William Shaw is a writer from Sheffield. His writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Georgia Review, and Daily Science Fiction. His first book, a critical study of the Doctor Who episode The Rings of Akhaten, was published in 2020. He is quoted on the Wikipedia page for @dril.
Brit Washburn is the author of the essay collection Homing In: Attempts on a Life of Poetry and Purpose (Alexandria Quarterly Press, 2023), and the poetry collections Notwithstanding (Wet Cement Press, 2019) and What Is Given (forthcoming from Wet Cement, Spring 2025). She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Interlochen Arts Academy in Northern Michigan, where she was born and raised, and of the soon-to-be late, great Goddard College in Vermont. Brit has been awarded an artist’s grant by the Vermont Studio Center and works as a freelance writer, editor, indexer, a Montessori teacher, and instructor in the Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina Asheville. Her work can be found in print and online via www.britwashburn.com.
Class of 2026
Jesus Govea
Jesus Govea is a writer from Chicago, Illinois. He received his B.A in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. He has been published in Poetry, Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, and has appeared in Slam Your Poetry by Miles Mercill and Narcisa Nozica. He enjoys reading world literature, watching Columbo, and playing badminton.
Emelia Kamadulski
Emelia Kamadulski is a poet and artist born in St. Louis and raised in the Pacific Northwest and the Mountain West. Her work explores mental illness, love, family, and the boundaries between art, place, and identity. She graduated from the University of Denver with a BA in creative writing and a minor in studio art. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys birdwatching, fiber crafts, and haunting her local library.
Karan Kapoor
Karan Kapoor is a poet from New Delhi, India. They have been awarded or placed for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, Frontier Global Poetry Prize, and BLR Prize among others. A finalist for the IHLR Chapbook Prize and Vallum Chapbook Award, their poems have appeared in AGNI, North American Review, The Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. You can find them at: karankapoor.net.
Riley O’Mearns
Riley O’Mearns is a poet and a Gemini. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, she holds a BA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College in Indiana and an MA in English from Kansas State University. Her work fosters a gentle curiosity about identity and nature. She has so much to love: crocheting, her cats, the Legend of Zelda series, yacht rock, and the em dash (among other things).
Ifreen Raveen
Ifreen Raveen is a writer from Indian Administered Kashmir. She has previously worked as an associate software engineer and an independent journalist. Her stories focus on the inner lives and private spaces of women living in a conflict zone, collective and generational trauma, and the many projections of everyday life under prolonged political turmoil. She believes in the power of storytelling, of words and imagination, for personal healing, and to remember, connect people, and transcend limitations.
Kirk Reilly
Kirk Reilly is a fiction writer, playwright, and former actor from Central Florida. He received a BFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. His plays have been developed and/or performed at HB Studio, Brooklyn College, The Tank NYC, and Treefort:Storyfort.
Amanda Silva
Amanda Silva (or A.C. Silva) was born and raised in Carlisle Pennsylvania, earned her B.A. in Written Arts and Spanish Studies from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson New York, and has lived in Boston Massachusetts ever since. Her short stories have been published by Haunted Waters Press, Add To Cart Magazine, and The Bangalore Review. She likes her fiction funny, suspenseful, and/or unsettling. Her favorite person is her cat, Bowling Ball. Her favorite animal(s) are the hordes of wild turkeys that roam the streets of Boston. Her favorite mode of transportation is swimming. She dreams of someday owning a haunted house.
Grace Turner
Grace Turner is a pack rat and an easy laugh. She takes sleeping very seriously and can often be found in the wild clad in vintage nightwear—the world is her bed/clamshell/crypt. She is interested in material culture and memory.
Eric Yoo
Eric Yoo was born in Texas and grew up in Virginia. He likes the Spurs and also the sport of tennis. His favorite drink is cold sparkling water on a hot day.
Class of 2025
Emilia Borjas
Emilia Borjas is a writer rooted in Fresno, CA. Her work has previously appeared in Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, a journal produced in the Central Valley. She holds a BA degree in English and Secondary Education from CSU Fresno State. She digs cooking, billiards, and long car drives.
Jay Steven Culmone
Jay Steven Culmone is a writer from Wallingford, CT. He has a B.A. in math and a B.A./M.A. in philosophy, and somehow he’s gotten away with never actually using them. His stories tend to live somewhere near speculative fiction/bizarro/fabulism. If he isn’t writing, he’s probably watching what is by all accounts too many cartoons.
Kapreece Dorrah
Kapreece Dorrah is a writer and performer from a mixture of South Carolina and Virginia. Kapreece, after an odyssey through the Carolinas, obtained his B.A. in English from Clemson University. At Clemson, he was involved in various councils and activism and helped to found a Black arts collective. He has now returned to Virginia seeking his M.F.A. in Creative writing. Kapreece’s writing/performance interests lie in poetry, playwriting, nonfiction, theatre, and the spoken word. His writing seeks to tackle topics such as generational trauma, childhood, sneakers, and everything in between. Aside from writing, he is interested in basketball, music, history and loves open mics. His favorite quote is by James Baldwin which is “artists are here disturb the peace,” which is what he hopes to do through his writing.
Fez
Fez is an ecopoet from Northern Michigan with a love for things that *could* kill them but haven’t yet, like swimming during thunderstorms and eating raw brownie batter. Their work explores the body as wilderness and wilderness as bodies, with a particular fondness for decomposition and pleasure. They are a self-proclaimed “reformed horse girl.”
Grace Gaynor
Grace Gaynor is a poet from Louisville, Kentucky. Her work explores lesbian identity, gender performance, and body image. She earned her BA from Hollins University, where she studied English and GWS. As an undergraduate, she served as an editor for Cargoes, a campus literary magazine. She enjoys cooking vegan dishes, reading, and sweet tea.
Shaheer Malik
Shaheer Malik is a writer from Lahore, Pakistan. In 2020, he graduated from Yale University with a BA in English Language and Literature after ping-ponging between History, Computer Science, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. He has worked as a web-developer, tutor, clerk at a law office, political intern, freelance content writer, and a librarian. He likes to write about the spaces between languages, cultures, memories, and artistic mediums. He also likes Sufi poetry.
Elisha Mykelti
Elisha Mykelti is an Ohio-and-Tennessee-raised poet and editor. She dedicates herself to musical, dialectical, and innovative poetry that honors time and place, especially the South. Elisha serves on the editorial board for Sundress Publications. Her work has appeared in Berkeley Poetry Review. She holds a BA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Tennessee. In her free time, Elisha does beadwork and reads tarot cards.
Catalina Santana
Catalina Santana is a fiction writer from Queens, New York. She received her BA in English from the University of Chicago. Her work explores identity, martyrdom, awe, racism and power. She is particularly interested in those themes within the context of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
