Meet our Guest Editors
Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is the Pushcart-nominated author of three books and two chapbooks. Her work has been seen across the web and in print, including Free State Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. She received her MFA in fiction from New York University in 2021 and also holds degrees from Bard College and The New School. Find her on Twitter at @jo_avocado.
Kate Blakinger is a writer and editor. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epiphany, Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, New Stories from the Midwest, The Offing, and elsewhere. She is a Tin House workshop alumna and holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. The Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Jentel, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center have supported her writing with fellowships.
Alexa Doran completed her PhD in Poetry at Florida State University in 2021 and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Tallahassee Community College. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). You can look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Massachusetts Review, and NELLE, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.
Amanda Ellard is an English teacher and PhD in Creative Writing candidate. She holds a Master’s in Folklore Studies and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in various literary journals and across ebook platforms. She also writes for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s Folklife Magazine. For fun, Amanda loves a great dystopian or xianxia novel and is a multimedia artist.
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her story collection, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. She is a recipient of the Sara Patton Fiction Stipend from The Writer’s Hotel. Her work has appeared in The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. Connect with her @bb_garin or bbgarin.wordpress.com.
Dr. Anne Greenawalt is the editor-in-chief and founder of Sport Stories Press and teaches writing and communications at universities in central Pennsylvania. She’s a writer, swimmer, educator, and trail adventurer.
Mimi Manyin writes stories when she is not improvising on the piano. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Meridian, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Mimi was a Peter Taylor Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has also received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Summer Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, One Story Summer Writers’ Conference, and American Short Fiction Summer Workshop. She is at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. Connect with her @MimiManyin.
Rebecca Paredes is a writer from Lake Elsinore, California, where the IHOP is located next to the graveyard. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Barren Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, Mosaic, and other publications. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and is currently working on a linked collection of short stories inspired by her hometown.
Justine Payton is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Isele Magazine, The Masters Review, The Keeping Room, and others. She is currently the managing editor of ONLY POEMS and an editor for Ecotone Magazine.
Rebecca Reynolds has an MFA in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has been published in various literary magazines such as Ascent, The Boiler, MudRoom, and Copper Nickel. She has written a short story collection and is currently working on a novel.
Margaret Whitehead is a writer, researcher, editor and educator based out of western Massachusetts. She received her MA in Literary Journalism from NYU, and is an alumna of the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, Lambda Literary, Tin House Workshop, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Atavist, Narratively, and the North American Review, among other publications. She won the Thomas Morton Memorial Fiction prize in 2018.
Val M. Mathews teaches courses in editing for the Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, the University of California Berkeley Extension, and the Editorial Freelancers Association in New York City. She’s passionate about helping private clients develop their storytelling chops and fine-tune their writing style. She also works as an editorial consultant for CRAFT Literary and The Masters Review. Val earned an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University and a BFA from the University of Georgia. Fun fact about Val: She’s been an FAA-certified flight instructor for over 25 years, and in the past, she flew Learjets for a living. You may find her at valmathews.com and @EditorVMathews (Twitter).
Jill Kolongowski writes the Substack newsletter Tiny True Stories and is also the author of the essay collection Life Lessons Harry Potter Taught Me (Ulysses Press, 2017). Her work also appears in Electric Lit, Insider, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her essays have won Sundog Lit’s First Annual Contest series and the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket, and she earned her MFA from St. Mary’s College of California. Jill teaches writing at the College of San Mateo, and lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter. Find her on Twitter @jillkolongowski.
Emily Zhao holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, where her work was awarded the Hopwood Novel Prize and Geoffrey James Gosling Novel Prize. Her fiction is published or forthcoming in Joyland and The Harvard Advocate, and has received support from the New York State Writers Institute.