Heather Bryant won the 2009 Southeast Review Narrative Nonfiction Contest.  She was Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Randolph College, Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, and fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts’ Moulin à Nef residence in France.  Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, The Southeast Review, online at www.womenwriters.net, and in anthologies from Seal Press and Bolder Press.  She currently teaches writing and literature in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Pace University, Pleasantville.


Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of thirteen books including the forthcoming All I Ask for Is Longing: Poems 1994- 2014 (2014 BOA Editions) Scything Grace (2013 Etruscan Press) and Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (2010 BOA Editions). He works at a pool hall in Erie, PA.


Alice Fulton received a 2011 Literature Award "to honor exceptional achievement"  from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books include Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems and The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories, both of which were published by W.W. Norton. Her work also can be found in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry; The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine; and The Best of the Best American Poetry, 25th Anniversary Edition.  New poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in Little Star, The New Yorker, Tin House, Crazy Horse, and Smartish Pace. 


Susan Celia Greenfield's fiction has appeared in Cimarron Review, Room, and Talon Online Magazine.  She is the author of Mothering Daughters: Novels and the Politics of Family Romance, Frances Burney to Jane Austen(Wayne State, 2002; paperback 2003), and the co-editor of Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865 (Kentucky, 1999). Her scholarly articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Eighteenth-Century Studies, PMLA, and ELH. 


April Naoko Heck is Kundiman fellow. Her first book of poems, A Nuclear Family, is due from UpSet Press in Fall 2013. She works for the NYU Creative Writing Program and lives in Brooklyn. 
 
 
Tyehimba Jess is the author of Leadbelly: Poems.  He is Assistant Professor at College of Staten Island. 


 
Kristen Kosmas is an American playwright and performer. She has had new works commissioned by the Chocolate Factory (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf (NYC), Seattle University's SITE Specific, Dixon Place (NYC), and the New City Theater in Seattle. Her plays and solo performances have been presented in Seattle, Austin, Boston, Chicago, and in New York City at numerous venues including the Chocolate Factory, the Prelude festival, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, Little Theater, Barbès, the Ontological/Hysteric Downstairs Series, and the Poetry Project. Her play Hello Failure was published by Ugly Duckling Presse; her multi-voice performance text This From Cloudland appears in the latest issue of “PLAY A Journal of Plays”; and her companion pieces ANTHEM and The Mayor of Baltimore were recently published by 53rd State Press. Kristen is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Whitman College.  

 

Kenji C. Liu received his BA from John F Kennedy University and his MA from California Institute of Integral Studies. A Pushcart Prize nominee and first runner-up finalist for the Poets & Writers 2013 California Writers Exchange Award, his writing appears in or is forthcoming from The Baltimore Review, RHINO Poetry, Generations, Eye to the Telescope, Ozone Park Journal, Kweli Journal, Doveglion Press, Best American Poetry's blog, Lantern Review, and others. His poetry chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes (Finishing Line Press, 2009) was nominated for a 2009 California Book Award. A three-time VONA alum and recipient of residencies at Djerassi and Blue Mountain Center, Liu is poetry editor emeritus at Kartika Review.

 

Patrice C. Queen is an advocate, poet, writer and public speaker with a focus on peace building, domestic violence, incest, rape, abuse and injustice as well as gender issues. She is currently organizing her first documentary, "Tell Me Mother, Tell Me Father" and works with the Rising Phoenix Peace Museum which features work of those who use the arts for the purpose of healing and transformation.  She uses Participatory Healing Drum Circle to transform lives through rhythm, words as well as Forum Theater.


Sharon Suzuki-Martinez is the author of The Way of All Flux (2012), winner of the New Rivers Press MVP Poetry Prize. She grew up in Hawaii, earned a PhD in English from the University of Arizona, and now lives behind a giant cactus, by choice.