We are excited to share that The Masters Review Volume IX is now available for purchase on Amazon.com! Get to know the writers who were selected by Rick Bass and pick up your copy today!
“Exchanges” by Dara Kell
Dara Kell is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker. Her films have been broadcast on PBS, TVFrance, and Netflix, and screened at festivals worldwide. Dara has made films in Brazil, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and China, and is currently making a documentary about Reverend William Barber and civil disobedience in America. Her short story “Small Holding” won the Zoetrope All:Story Fiction Contest in 2015. Dara is a graduate of Rhodes University and lives in Brooklyn and Cape Town.
“The God in the Dark” by Leeyee Lim
Leeyee Lim is a Malaysian-Chinese writer who currently lives and writes in Toronto. Her fiction has previously been published or is forthcoming in Epiphany Magazine, The Drum Literary Magazine and Necessary Fiction. She taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“Pirating” by Jack Foraker
Jack Foraker is a writer from Yolo County, California.
“Proper Forage” by Barbara Litkowski
Barbara Litkowski holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Butler University. Her short story “Monarch Blue” won Arizona State University’s 2018 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest, was anthologized in Everything Change, Volume II, and reprinted in the international journal, IMPACT. Her short stories have also appeared in Subtle Fiction, Blue Lake Review and Luna Station Quarterly. She was selected as a finalist in the 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Novel-in-Progress Competition and is a former recipient of the Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Program grant. She lives with her husband in Zionsville, Indiana.
“Where the Last Grizzly Was Murdered” by Charisse Hovey Kubr
Charisse Hovey Kubr published her first short story as a teenager, earned a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from California State University at Long Beach and worked as the Editor of Sun Newspapers in Seal Beach, California. Her freelance creative nonfiction has been published in magazines such as Sea, The Yacht, Destinations and the Orange Coast College Marine Science Journal. In addition to teaching English Language Arts in public schools, she has taught Creative Nonfiction at Idyllwild Arts Academy, Outdoor Education in Big Bear and once worked as a horseback Interpretive Naturalist in Kings Canyon National Park. Currently she teaches English courses while writing short stories and screenplays in Redondo Beach, California where she lives with her husband and two children.
“Above Snowline” by Rachel Markels Webber
Rachel Markels Webber spent much of her childhood in Seattle, Washington and Boulder, Colorado. The daughter of mountain climbers, she spent many weekends hiking with her parents. Rachel currently lives in Massachusetts where she trains Dressage Horses and their riders. “Above Snowline” is her second published short story, her first, “Missing,” appeared in the Charles River Review.
“Mortal Champions” by Stefani Nellen
Stefani Nellen is a German psychologist with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her stories appear in Guernica, AGNI, Glimmer Train, Third Coast, the Bellevue Literary Review, PRISM International, and Cutbank, among others. She is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Her real home is currently in the Netherlands with her family; her online home is at stefaninellen.com.
“Everyday Horror Show” by Paola Ferrante
Paola Ferrante’s debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack, was shortlisted for the 2020 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize and won The New Quarterly‘s 2019 Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award, Grain‘s 2020 prize for Poetry and Room‘s 2018 prize for Fiction. She was also an Honorable Mention for The North American Review‘s 2020 Kurt Vonnegut prize. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in PRISM International, CV2, The Journey Prize Stories 32, and elsewhere. She is the Poetry Editor at Minola Review and resides in Toronto, Canada.
“Cicada Summer” by Emma Eun-joo Choi
Emma Eun-joo Choi is a playwright and fiction writer from Vienna, Virginia. Her fiction has been featured in publications including Passages North, Jelly Bucket Magazine, and The Harvard Advocate, and her plays have been professionally produced in DC and New York City. Emma is a current student at Harvard College studying English, where she also performs comedy.
“Whitney in the Real World” by Stephanie Pushaw
Stephanie Pushaw is a writer and editor from Los Angeles. She was a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Montana, where she received an MFA in Fiction. Her short stories appear in Narrative, Sundog Lit, and Joyland, and her essays in Mississippi Review, DIAGRAM, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Stephanie has also doctored screenplays, edited interviews for The Believer, and lived in eight cities on three continents (so far). She is currently a PhD candidate in Fiction at the University of Houston.