CONTRIBUTORS: WINTER/SPRING 2017

JOSEPH ALLEMAN is a signature member of both the American and National Watercolor Societies. He exhibits his work regularly through gallery, juried, and invitational shows, and has been a featured artist in the majority of contemporary fine art publications. He lives in northern Utah.

AFUA ANSONG is a Ghanaian-American artist who writes poetry and teaches contemporary and traditional West African dance. She’s currently working on several projects about the migration of humans and birds. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in The Seventh Wave, The Maine Review, and other magazines.

ADRIAN BONENBERGER writes fiction and poetry with a focus on people in war, or who have been affected by war. His memoirs, Afghan Post, are available through The Head and The Hand Press. He co-edited an anthology of veterans’ fiction, The Road Ahead (Pegasus), which is due out from in January of 2017. He lives and works in Ukraine.

BILLY COLLINS’ latest collection of poems is The Rain in Portugal. He was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as New York State Poet (2004–2005) and United States Poet Laureate (2001–2003).

MARTHA COOLEY is the author of The Archivist (a national bestseller published in 12 foreign markets) and Thirty-Three Swoons (both published by Little, Brown). Her co-translation (with Antonio Romani) of Antonio Tabucchi’s Time Ages in a Hurry was published last year by Archipelago Books. Guesswork, a memoir-in-essays set largely in Italy, will be published in Spring 2017 by Catapult. Cooley’s short fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals. A Professor of English at Adelphi University, she taught for 15 years in the Bennington Writing Seminars.

CORINNE GEERTSEN is formally trained in drawing and painting with an MFA from Brigham Young University. She grew up in Montana.

GARTH GREENWELL is the author of What Belongs to You, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he holds graduate degrees from Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Iowa City.

NICOLE HEBDON’s fiction has been published by SmokeLong Quarterly, Lumina, The Whale, and The Underground. Her nonfiction has been published by DoNorth, Countryside Magazine, Fembot Magazine, Auxiliary Magazine, Faeries and Enchantment Magazine, and several newspapers. She is currently working on a young adult novel about obsessive love.

MITCHELL KING is a runaway Texan living in Kansas City. He was awarded the Jody Donahue Poetry Prize from Stony Brook Southampton in 2014, has published memoir in The Southampton Review and has featured poetry with Matrix Magazine and Plenitude with work forthcoming at Rinky Dink Press. He is currently working on his first collection and he hopes someday to colonize the moon.

JAY LEEMING is the author of the poetry books Dynamite on a China Plate and Miracle Atlas. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, and he has been a featured reader at Butler University, Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference, and the Woodstock Poetry Festival. He has taught poetry workshops throughout the United States and abroad, and is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He makes his home in Ithaca, New York, and teaches there through the Green Horse Poetry School, which he founded.

When she was young, SARA MAJKA’s family moved along the New England shoreline with the Coast Guard, living in Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, northern Maine, and even for a time in a lighthouse. She went on to get graduate degrees in writing from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Bennington College and was a fiction fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Her stories have appeared in A Public Space, PEN America, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Guernica. She now lives in Providence with her young son. Cities I’ve Never Lived In is her first book.

MICHAEL MASLIN has been contributing to The New Yorker Magazine since 1977. Four collections of his work were published by Simon & Schuster. With his wife and fellow New Yorker cartoonist, Liza Donnelly, he co-edited one collection of drawings and co-authored three collections, including Cartoon Marriage. In 2009 he began Ink Spill, a website devoted to New Yorker cartoonists’ news and history. His biography of The New Yorker artist Peter Arno was published in April 2016 by Regan Arts.

DANIEL MENAKER’s latest book is The African Svelte: Ingenious Misspellings That Make Surprising Sense. He started working at The New Yorker in 1969 as a fact checker and became an editor in 1976. He left in 1994 to work as a Senior Editor at Random House, where he eventually became Editor-in-Chief. Two of his books have been named Best Books of the Year by the New York Times notable titles and another a Notable Title. He has also won O. Henry Awards for short fiction, and has written numerous essays, reviews, and features for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and many other journals and newspapers.

CAITLIN MULLEN earned a BA in English and Creative Writing at Colgate University and an MA in English at NYU. Her work has recently appeared in The Baltimore Review and is forthcoming in Joyland.

JULIO REYES was raised in the urban sprawls of Los Angeles. He earned his BFA in Painting and Drawing with a minor in Sculpture at the Laguna College of Art and Design in 2005. His first solo exhibition debuted at Arcadia Fine Arts in New York in 2011. In 2012 he was award the William F. Draper Grand Prize by the Portrait Society of America, and was included as one of American Artist Magazine’s “25 Artists of Tomorrow.” In 2014 his work was featured in the Contemporary Realism Biennial at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana. He is currently preparing for his third solo show in Los Angeles in 2017.

ROGER ROSENBLATT is the author of 19 books, published in 14 languages. They include the New York Times bestsellers Kayak Morning, Unless It Moves the Human Heart, and Making Toast, a memoir of his family, which initially appeared as an essay in The New Yorker. He has received the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and the President’s Medal of the Chautauqua Institution for his body of work. Published here is an excerpt from Roger’s newest novel, Stone Harvest.

HELEN SCHREINER is an MFA candidate in the new film program at Stony Brook Southampton + Manhattan in association with Killer Films. She also recently completed the two-year professional actor training program at William Esper Studio. Her short story, “The Fish List,” was published in Maura Magazine. She is also a former member of the Jeffrey Lewis Band (Rough Trade/Beggars Group). Schreiner’s short film of “The Beginner” is in preparation for a festival run. She has developed the story into a feature-length script that she intends to produce.

IRIS SMYLES has published two books of fiction: Iris Has Free Time and Dating Tips for the Unemployed. Founder and editor of the web museum Smyles & Fish, she edited and wrote the afterword for the cult book The Capricious Critic. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, BOMB, Paris Review Daily, Vogue, The Observer, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Best American Travel Writing 2015, among other publications, anthologies, and artist catalogs. She was a humor columnist for Splice Today and currently serves as the literary editor of EAST, The Hampton Star Magazine.

JESSICA SOFFER is the author of the novel Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, Redbook, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches fiction and food writing at Connecticut College and Stony Brook University’s MFA program and lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

JENNY ALLEN is a writer and performer. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other publications, and in anthologies including The 50 Funniest American Writers (edited by Andy Borowitz). She has performed her award-winning solo show, I Got Sick Then I Got Better, at venues across the country. A collection of her essays will be published in June, 2017, by Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Artist, illustrator, and designer SCOTT BLUEDORN was born in Southampton, New York. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2009. His work has been featured in multiple solo and group exhibitions throughout the East End of Long Island and in Manhattan, and is also featured in The Edward F. Albee Foundation collection. He lives and works in East Hampton, New York.

MARTINA CLARK shares her time between working as an international public health professional, singing, teaching, and writing. She writes memoir, personal essays, and travel narratives. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but is—and always will be—a Californian at heart. Martina holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook Southampton. Her writing can be found at martina-clark.com.

After growing up in Ohio, MATT COLLINS went on to university in St. Louis, Missouri, where he earned his BFA. He started out in advertising, first in St. Louis, and then in Manhattan. He finally moved to Connecticut and began illustrating. He lives there with his wife and son and produces award-winning images for newspapers, magazines, and children’s books.

JORDAN E. FRANKLIN is an aspiring poet from Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Suffragette City, Ty(po-e:tic)us, and Having A Whiskey Coke With You, among others. Clips of her poetry performances can be found on The Buzzard’s Banquet website.

ANABEL GRAFF received her BA from Vassar College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. She is the winner of the 2014 Prada Feltrinelli Prize and The Fiction Desk’s 2015 Ghost Story Competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Day One, Prada Journal, The Chicago Tribune’s Printer's Row, Story|Houston, The Fiction Desk, Joyland, and Joyland Retro. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York, where she teaches creative writing and is at work on her first novel.

LAUREN HARVEY is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She teaches creative writing at Stony Brook University and works as a freelance editor.

JEORDIE is a Taiwanese writer who came to the United States in 2015. Besides his first published work, “On a Good Day,” his other short stories include “Simpson” and “It’s Not Too Late to Rain.” He is currently working on his first novel, Smells Ugly. His Chinese name is Dar-Jiunn Chou, but he prefers to be called Jeordie.

DOUGLAS LAWSON: Born in South Carolina, lived in Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Washington state. Spent time in every state except Hawaii. Currently living with a wife and cat on a sailboat in Seattle.

TIMOTHY LIU was born in 1965 in San Jose, California, to immigrant parents from mainland China. He is the author of many books of poems, including Don’t Go Back To Sleep. A new work, Kingdom Come: A Fantasia, is coming out in Spring 2017. Translated into 10 languages, Liu’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, BOMB, The Paris Review, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review. His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Liu is a Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey and lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, New York.

MICHAEL J. MARIANO was born in 1947 and received his education from the Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut. He’s studied under Ken Davies, Rudolph Zallinger, Deane Keller, and Leonard Everett Fisher. He lives on the Connecticut coast.

JACK MAYER is a Vermont writer and pediatrician. For 10 years he was a country doctor on the Canadian border bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. Dr. Mayer established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, Vermont, in 1991, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He was a participant at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2003 and 2005 (fiction) and 2008 (poetry). His first nonfiction book is Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project. His new novel, Before the Court of Heaven, is about Weimar Germany and the rise of the Third Reich.

GIGI MILLS has a BFA in Theatre from the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and an MA in Choreography from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She has exhibited in the United States, Italy, France, and China, where she was a visiting artist in Zhangjiajie in 2009.

SUZANNE PARKER is a winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award for her poetry collection Viral, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and was on the National Library Association’s Over the Rainbow Book List of recommended books for 2013. She is also a winner of Tupelo Press’s 2016 Sunken Garden Chapbook Award for her collection Feed. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Tampa Review, Notre Dame Review, Diode, Cimarron Review, and Hunger Mountain. She’s a poetry editor at MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations, and she directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey.

MIKE ROBERTS is a novelist and screenwriter from Buffalo, New York. His first screenplay, King Kelly, premiered at the 2012 South by Southwest Film Festival, and his second, an adaptation of Brad Land’s memoir Goat, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. Cannibals in Love (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016) is his first novel. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) published his first volume of poetry in 1904, In Reckless Ecstasy. He received honorary degrees from Lombard, Knox College, and Northwestern University. His poetry career took off in earnest with Chicago Poems (1916) and Cornhuskers (1918), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. Sandburg also wrote extensively about Abraham Lincoln, American folklore, and ballads, as well as books for children. He won two more Pulitzers for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) and Complete Poems (1950).

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822) was a Romantic era English poet. Some of his most well-known works include Ozymandias, Queen Mab, and Prometheus Unbound.

JONATHAN SMITH received his BA from the University for Creative Arts in Canterbury, UK, and a diploma in Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism at the International Center for Photography in New York City, where he now lives. Smith has had solo exhibitions in both the United States and internationally, and has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Heart Biennial Award, the Flash Forward Award from The Magenta Foundation, and the PDN Annual Awards. His photographs have appeared in the Smithsonian and The View magazines, PDN, Art and Architecture, and The Royal Photographic Society. His work can be found at www.jonathansmithphotography.com.

GRANT SNIDER is the creator of the online strip, Incidental Comics. The Shape of Ideas, a collection of his comics on the creative process, will be published by Abrams in Spring 2017. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, with his family.

EMILY SULLIVAN is a writer and educator from Connecticut. She earned her BA in English from the University of Connecticut and her MA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work has appeared in The Toast, The Frisky, The Hartford Courant, and others. She is currently working on her first novel and during breaks she tweets @paperbacklady.

WALT WHITMAN (1819–1892) grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island, and became a printer in New York City and later a teacher on Long Island. The first edition of his seminal work, Leaves of Grass, was published in 1855. He spent the rest of his life working on subsequent editions and volunteering in hospitals during and following the Civil War. He died in Camden, New Jersey.