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SIR 2019 Fall


Artwork

was born in Kochi, Japan. She moved to the United States tocomplete her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art in 2000 and studied withrealist painter Adrian Gottlieb from 2002 to 2008. Her paintings have beenexhibited in galleries worldwide, including Dorothy Circus Gallery in Italy,Urban Nation in Germany, Gallery Bern Art in Japan, Corey Helford Galleryin Los Angeles, Haven Gallery in New York, and William Baczek Fine Arts inMassachusetts. Yoshii currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Poetry

"Honey"—Allison Adair’s debut collection, The Clearing, was selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in 2020 from Milkweed. Her work appears in Best American Poetry, Image, Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, and ZYZZYVA; and has been honored with the Pushcart Prize (2019), The Florida ReviewEditors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, and first place in Mid-American Review’s Fineline Competition. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Adair now lives in Boston, where she teaches at Boston College and GrubStreet.

"An Accommodation"— is the author of three poetry collections—Count the Waves,I Was the Jukebox, and Theories of Falling—as well as Don’t Kill the BirthdayGirl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of foodallergies. She served as the editor for Vinegar and Char: Verse from the SouthernFoodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster LiteratureCentre’s John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship,and four DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships. Beasley livesin Washington, D.C., and teaches with the University of Tampa low-residencyMFA program.

"God Letter"— CM Burroughs is associate professor of poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, theMacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the StudioMuseum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response toart installations. Her first book is The Vital System from Tupelo Press, and herpoetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Callaloo, jubilat,Ploughshares, and Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Burroughs earned herMFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Her second book, Master Suffering, will bepublished by Tupelo Press in 2021.

is the author of Translucence, co-written with Samar AbdelJaber; Downtown; The Deeply Flawed Human; and SuperLoop. The assistantdirector and a senior language lecturer at New York University’s Tandon School ofEngineering, Callihan frequently collaborates with artists and actors throughoutNew York City.

A finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series, Kyle Churney’s poetry hasappeared in Salt Hill, The Journal, Memorious, and other publications, and hisessays are published in the Chicago Tribune. He is a recipient of a Literary Awardfrom the Illinois Arts Council and a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony.A native of rural Illinois, Churney lives in Chicago, where he teaches developmentalwriting at a community college.

"Marigolds of Fire"—Ama Codjoe is the author of Blood of the Air, winner of the eighth annualDrinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, forthcoming from NorthwesternUniversity Press in April 2020. She has been awarded support from Cave Canem,Jerome, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations, as well as fromCallaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Crosstown Arts, Hedgebrook, and theMacDowell Colony. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in TheCommon, The Massachusetts Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Codjoe is the recipient of a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, The Georgia Review’s 2018Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, a 2019 DISQUIET Literary Prize, and a 2019 NEALiterature Fellowship.

third book, Paradise Drive, won the 2015 Press 53 Poetry Award.A new chapbook is forthcoming from Swan Scythe Press, and recent poems are inBlackbird, Ecotone, The Hudson Review, The Massachusetts Review, The SouthernReview, and Southwest Review. Recognitions include the Cavafy Prize, the JamesHearst Poetry Prize and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Sewanee, andThe Frost Place. Foust is the current Marin County Poet Laureate, the poetryeditor for Women’s Voice for Change, and an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine.

Madelyn Garner’s recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The BestAmerican Poetry 2015, The Pinch, The Florida Review, The Western HumanitiesReview, Water~Stone Review, and the anthology Beyond Forgetting, Poetry andProse about Alzheimer’s Disease. She is the co-editor of the poetry anthologyCollecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined. Her debut poetry manuscript,Hum of Our Blood, winner of Tupelo Press/3: A Taos Press July Open Reading,was published in 2017.

"Buying Back-to-School Supplies"—Matthew Guenette is the author of three poetry collections, includingVasectomania and American Busboy, both from the University of Akron Press.His first book, Sudden Anthem, winner of the American Poetry Journal BookPrize, is published by Dream Horse Press. Guenette works at a technical collegein Madison, Wisconsin, where he lives with his wife, their two children, and atwenty-pound cat named Butternut.

is a Sierra Leonean-American writer and an Oakland native.She’s the author of A Brief Biography of My Name (Akashic Books/APBF, 2018),which was included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano),and When The Living Sing(Ledge Mule Press, 2017). She received an MFA inpoetry from Indiana University, Bloomington and is currently a doctoral studentin creative writing and English literature at the University of Cincinnati.

Tara McDaniel is a poetry teacher residing in the arts district of Minneapolis.Her poetry is forthcoming in Cutthroat and RHINO Poetry, and has been featuredin Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.Her poetics and prose have been featured in William Paterson University’sContemporary Writing Blog and The Loft Literary Center’s Writer’s Block Blog.McDaniel is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and is currently aLoft Mentor Series Fellow in Poetry and Prose.

"Professor Marva Stewart’s Funeral Service at Gilbert-Lambuth Chapel, Paine College" is the author of Starshine & Clay, a CLMP FirecrackerAward finalist featured on NPR’s All Things Considered as a collection thatcaptures America in poetry, and She Has a Name, a finalist for both the AudreLorde and Lambda Literary Awards. Moon’s work has been published widely,including in Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, Poem-A-Day, PBS Newshour,Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize winner and 2015 New American Poetwho has received fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Hedgebrook, she holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is an assistantprofessor of creative writing at Agnes Scott College.

is the author of three books of poems, including, most recently,Vivarium; a book of literary criticism, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads LiteraryTheory; and a book of personal essays, Terroir: Essays on Otherness, forthcomingfrom Trinity UP in 2020. Sajé teaches at Westminster College in Salt Lake and inthe Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program.

is the author of the poetry collections No Object and HardChild. She teaches at Tufts University.

"Gather" Originally from Georgia, is currently pursuing a PhD in Englishand creative writing at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, where she co-foundedand curates the LHUCA Literary Series. Her work can be found in PrairieSchooner, Waxwing, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, and other journals. Smith receivedher MFA in poetry from The New School and is the recipient of scholarshipsfrom the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center.

is the author of Virgin, the inaugural winner of the JakeAdam York Prize, selected by Ross Gay for Milkweed Editions (2018). She is alsothe author of the chapbook Nonstop Godhead, selected by Rigoberto Gonzálezfor a 2016 Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship. Her poem“I’m Trying to Write a Poem ² a Virgin and It’s Awful” was selected for BestNew Poets 2015 by Tracy K. Smith. Poems have also appeared in The New Yorker,Boston Review, FIELD, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The AntiochReview. Sotelo is the recipient of the 2016 DISQUIET International Literary Prize,a CantoMundo fellowship, and scholarships from the Community of Writers atSquaw Valley and the Image Text Ithaca Symposium.

is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (OrisonPoetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, 2019), Disinheritance, andControlled Hallucinations. He is the winner of numerous awards, including thePhilip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize, ConfrontationPoetry Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. Williams serves as editor of The InflectionistReview and works as a literary agent. Previous publishing credits include The YaleReview, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review,Third Coast, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

is the author of Monk Eats an Afro and the co-editor ofPeace is a Haiku Song. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, she has been a Writer inResidence at Hedgebrook and Aspen Words. Wisher taught high school Englishfor a decade, served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts, andfounded and directed the Germantown Poetry and Outbound Poetry Festivals.She performs a unique blend of poetry and song with her band The Afroeaters,and has led workshops and curated events in partnership with the PhiladelphiaMuseum of Art, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the U.S. Department ofArts & Culture. Wisher is currently the Curator of Spoken Word at PhiladelphiaContemporary and is part of the first cohort of artists with studios at the CherryStreet Pier on the Delaware River Waterfront.

Fiction

is a writer from Texas. His fiction has appeared in The Yale Review, The Iowa Review, Story, and elsewhere. He lives in Cleveland, where he is finishinga novel and a collection of stories.

lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her work appears inCarve Magazine, The Southampton Review, failbetter, SAND Journal, and elsewhere.Her prose has won the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest (2019) and theFrank McCourt Memoir Prize (2018), and been supported by fellowships and artistresidencies from the Tin House Summer Workshop, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, Jentel,and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

is the author of the short story collections Universal Love(forthcoming 2020) and Children of the New World, which was chosen as a notablebook of the year by The New York Times, NPR, Google, and Electric Literature.His fiction and interviews have appeared in Rolling Stone, World Literature Today,Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Best American Experimental Writing.Weinstein is the director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing,and an associate professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University.

Nonfiction

work focuses on the arts emerging from the AfricanDiaspora. She is particularly interested in the mysterious link between artisticgenius and mental health. de Souza is a 2020 Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residenceat Twelve Literary Arts and a 2019 MacDowell Fellow. In the past year, she was afinalist for the Creative Capital Award, the Oxford American Jeff Baskin WritersFellowship, and the Mary C. Mohr Nonfiction Award. Her first book, Sleeping inthe Fire: The Black Artist in America, is forthcoming. Find her@paintwithlite.

is the author of The Sound of Listening, Pictures at an Exhibition,Sand Opera, I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky, A Concordanceof Leaves, To See the Earth, and others. His work has garnered a Lannan fellowship,two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize for Excellence inJournalism, the Beatrice Hawley Award, two Arab American Book Awards,the Watson Fellowship, the Creative Workforce Fellowship, the Cleveland ArtsPrize, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. Metres is professor of English atJohn Carroll University in Cleveland.