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Spring 2016


Artwork

The Amish quilts featured in the spring 2016 issue are from the ²’sMorton Quilt collection, a part of the greater ² Art Collection. TheMorton’s (Judy Laval ’73 and the late Thomas R. Morton of Newburgh,Indiana) began this collection about thirty years ago. It was borne out of their annual visits to the Daviess County Quilt Auction and the eventual friendshipsthat developed with members of the Southern Indiana Amish community.

Poetry

founded and edits Divedapper, a home for dialogues with themost vital voices in contemporary poetry. His poems have appeared recently inAmerican Poetry Review, Narrative, Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, PBS NewsHour,and elsewhere. Previously, he ran The Quirk, a for-charity print literary journal.He has also served as poetry editor for BOOTH. Akbar’s chapbook, Portrait of theAlcoholic, will be out in January with Sibling Rivalry Press.

is the author of The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State University Press, 2015), selected by Mark Doty for the Wick Poetry Prize and named a Split This Rock Spectacular Book of 2015. He has published writing and comics in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Blackbird, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. Bendorf lives in Washington, DC, where he co-founded the Mount Pleasant Poetry Project.

is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), and the forthcoming Saudade (Copper Canyon). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, and Best American Poetry. She lives in Manhattan, KS, and teaches at Kansas State University.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of Rocket Fantastic (forthcoming), Apocalyptic Swing(2009), and The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005), all from Persea Books. Her poems have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Review, Poetry, and other journals. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Prize; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writers Award; a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Civitella di Ranieri fellowship; and Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, Texas. Calvoccoressi is the senior poetry editor at Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

is a Tunisian-American poet and received her MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. The recipient of fellowships from Dickinson House and Quest Writers Conference and awards from Narrative Magazine, Nimrod Journal, the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and the Academy of American Poets, her work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2015, Narrative, North American Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.

is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of FurtherPossibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize (BOA Editions, Ltd; spring2017). His work has previously appeared in two chapbooks and publications suchas Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Poetry. Chen is aPhD candidate in English and creative writing at Texas Tech University.

is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Equilibrium, selected byAfaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsoredby Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American PoetsPrize and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Vanderbilt University where she serves as the poetry editor for NashvilleReview. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Rattle, Best NewPoets 2015, Crab Orchard Review, The Adroit Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Thrush, The Offing, and elsewhere.

Stephen Dobyns is the author of more than thirty-five novels and poetrycollections, includingIs Fat Bob Dead Yet?, published in September 2015; The BurnPalace; The Church of Dead Girls; Cold Dog Soup; Cemetery Nights; and Winter’sJourney. He has also published two books of essays on poetry. Among his honors area Melville Cane Award; Pushcart Prizes; a 1983 National Poetry Series selectionfor Black Dog, Red Dog: Poems; three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships;and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His new book of poetry, The Day’s Last Light Reddensthe Leaves of the Copper Beech, will be published by BOA in September 2016.

Peter Grandbois is the author of seven previous books including, most recently,The Girl on the Swing (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2015). His poems, stories, and essayshave previously appeared in such journals as The Kenyon Review, The GettysburgReview, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, The Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review,Zone 3, and DIAGRAM, among many others. His plays have been performed inSt. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. Grandbois is senior editor atBoulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.

is the author of two poetry collections: In Which I Play theRunaway (2016), winner of the Barrow Street Book Prize, and The RustedCity, published in the Marie Alexander Series from White Pine Press (2014).Her work has been included in Best New Poets 2013, and she’s been awardedliterary prizes from Crab Orchard Review, Arts & Letters, Hunger Mountain,and Poetry International. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appearedin journals like Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, and The Southeast Review.She is a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati and assistant editor for theCincinnati Review.

Rodney Jones is the prize-winning author of eleven books of poems. VillageProdigies, his new book, combines techniques of fiction and poetry, and is forthcomingin spring 2017 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Christopher Kempf is the author of Late in the Empire of Men, which won theLevis Prize in Poetry from Four Way Books and is forthcoming in March 2017.Recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a WallaceStegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University, he is currently a PhDstudent in English literature at the University of Chicago. His academic writingis forthcoming in Modernism/ modernity, and his poetry and essays have appearedin The Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review Online, and The NewRepublic, among other places. Kempf received his MFA from Cornell University.

is the author of Little Black Daydream (University of AkronPress, 2013) and The Luckless Age (Red Hen Press, 2011), winner of the BenjaminSaltman Award. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the AntiochReview, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, Mississippi Review, New EnglandReview, New Letters, Quarterly West and many others. Kistulentz directs thegraduate program in creative writing at Saint Leo University in Florida, and livesin the Tampa area with his family.

the author of the chapbook Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015),recently included on the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow List.His work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets 2014, Colorado Review,Indiana Review, Iowa Review, and Pleiades, among others. He is the recipient ofa fellowship from the Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry, and thefounder and editor-in-chief of The Adroit Journal. He lives in Philadelphia, wherehe is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.

is an MFA student in poetry at Indiana University and nonfiction editor of Indiana Review. Her work can be found in Mid-American Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Ilanot Review, Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature Online, and Ninth Letter Online. A recipient of the 2016 Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Award and the 2016 Kraft-Kinsey Award from the Kinsey Institute, she has also received support from The Yiddish Book Center, The National Society of Arts and Letters (Bloomington), Middlebury Summer Language School, and The Borns Jewish Studies Program.

Adrian Matejka a is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books,2003) and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), which was a winner of the National PoetrySeries. His most recent book, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded theAnisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award andPulitzer Prize. Matejka is the Ruth Lilly Professor/Poet-in-Residence at IndianaUniversity in Bloomington.

is the author of two collections of poetry: Translation(Kent State University Press, 2015), chosen by Jane Hirshfield for the 2014Wick Poetry Prize, and Small Gods, forthcoming from New Issues Press in 2017.His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including BestNew Poets 2014, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily, among others. Minicucci currentlyteaches writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.

debut collection, Marvels of the Invisible, won the 2014Berkshire Prize and is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2016. Her poems haveappeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review, North American Review,Copper Nickel, The New Guard, Mississippi Review, The Adroit Journal, Smartish Pace,Zone 3, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. Molberg holds an MFA from AmericanUniversity and a PhD from the University of North Texas. She currently teachesat the University of Central Missouri and is co-editor of Pleiades.

Jessica Poli is the author of the chapbooks Alexia (Sixth Finch), Glassland(JMWW), and The Egg Mistress (Gold Line Press). Her work has appeared inCaketrain, Sixth Finch, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. A recent graduate of theSyracuse University MFA program, Poli lives in Syracuse, NY, where she editsBirdfeast and works on a farm.

Isaac Pressnell’s work has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing2015, Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and manyother publications.

is the author of Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press, 2012). She has receivedfellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont StudioCenter. Her poems have been published in Field, Black Warrior Review, WashingtonSquare, and jubilat.

poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel,Crab Orchard Review, Harvard Review, Mississippi Review, New England Review, PrairieSchooner, Vinyl, Waxwing, the Poets on Growth anthology, and The Golden ShovelAnthology, among other venues. His criticism has appeared in American Microreviewsand Interviews, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Rain Taxi Review of Books. Rothman hastaught writing and cultural literatures throughout Boston, and is now pursuing aPhD at The Catholic University of America.

is a 2015 NEA fellow and finalist for The Ruth Lilly Fellowship fromthe Poetry Foundation. He’s a poetry fellow at The Michener Center for Writerswhere he serves as the editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He’s the two time BayArea Grand Slam Champion and author of the chapbooks A Guide to UndressingYour Monsters (Button Poetry, 2014); sad boy / detective (Black Lawrence Press,2015); and All The Rage (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016). sax’s poems are forthcomingin American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, PEN Poetry Series, Poetry,and other journals.

Steven D. Schroeder’s second book, The Royal Nonesuch (Spark Wheel Press,2013), won the 2014 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern IllinoisUniversity. His poetry is recently available or forthcoming in Crazyhorse, CrabOrchard Review, and The Laurel Review. Schroeder serves as board member, readingseries co-director, and contributing editor for River Styx magazine in St. Louis.

Michael Waters is the author and editor of numerous books of poetry, includingBOA titles Celestial Joyride (2016); Gospel Night; Darling Vulgarity, a finalist forthe Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems, finalistfor the Paterson Poetry Prize. The recipient of five Pushcart Prizes and multiplefellowships, Waters currently teaches at Monmouth University and in the DrewUniversity MFA program. Waters lives with his wife, poet Mihaela Moscaliuc,
in Ocean, New Jersey.

Interview

"A Word with Michael Waters"

Fiction

A writer and filmmaker, holds an MFA in fiction from The NewSchool, and her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, H.O.W. Journal, Los AngelesReview of Books, Third Coast, and other journals. Bull has also written and directedseveral films, and has received fellowships from UCLA, Rotary International,and the Fulbright Commission. Originally from Northern California, she currentlylives in Brooklyn and is working on a novel.

fourth book, the story collection The Virginity of FamousMen, will be out in September 2016 from Bloomsbury. Her previous books are the novels LittleKnown Facts and Paris, He Said, along with the story collection Portraits of a Fewof the People I’ve Made Cry. Sneed teaches part-time for the graduate writingprogram at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, IL.

Dario Sulzman was raised in upstate New York, and received his MFAin creative writing from Florida State University. His work has appeared inGulfstream, Potomac Review, and The Massachusetts Review, among other journals,and his essay, “Conflict” was the winner of the 2015 Iron Horse Literary ReviewTrifecta contest in creative nonfiction. Sulzman is currently pursuing a PhD increative writing and English at the University of Cincinnati.

is the director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute ofCreative Writing and the author of the short story collection Children of the NewWorld (Picador 2016). His fiction and translations have appeared in Cream CityReview, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades, PRISM International,World Literature Today, and other journals. He is the recipient of a SustainableArts Foundation Award, and his fiction has been awarded the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, and New Millennium Prize. His stories appear in theanthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 and 2015 LascauxPrize Stories. He is an associate professor of creative writing and a freelance editor,and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.

Nonfiction

work has appeared in Slice, Redivider, Indiana Review, BaltimoreReview, Tahoma Literary Review, Isthmus and elsewhere. She lives in central Ohiowith her husband and two young sons, where she is at work on a memoir.

Carol Smith is a Seattle writer whose work led the anthology The Best CreativeNonfiction (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007). Her poetry, fiction, and essayshave appeared, or are forthcoming, in Signs of Life, Mississippi Review, Pooled Ink,The New Guard, Hippocampus Magazine, Oberon Poetry, The Florida Review, andTravelers’ Tales (to Go). She was selected as a finalist for the 2015 Prime NumberMagazine Awards for creative nonfiction, for the 2015 Arts & Letters fiction prize,and for 徱’s 2015 nonfiction contest. Smith is currently at work on a novel.