Issue 126 Contributors
Lalaie Ameeriar is the author of Downwardly Global: Women, Work, and Citizenship in the Pakistani Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2017). Her academic work has appeared in American Anthropologist and Signs, with a forthcoming article in Cultural Anthropology. She is currently writing across genres, including poetry and memoir, and lives in Toronto with her daughter.
Following a 35-year career at the University of Arkansas School of Nursing teaching future generations of nurses how to diagnose and treat human responses to health and illness, Kathleen Barta continues life as a visual artist and occasional poet. She explores the endless variety of the human form through life drawing and uses the energy of the human gesture to create abstract watercolor paintings and prints.
Juliana Briggs is a Pittsburgh-based poet working as a research technician in trauma and transfusion medicine. She is an avid reader, runner, songwriter, and general music enthusiast. She spends much of her free time playing piano, guitar, and drums in an effort to avoid learning how to use Ableton.
Luanne Castle’s art appears in Thimble Literature, Raw Lit, and Best of Mad Swirl and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her writing has been nominated for Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her hybrid memoir-in-flash will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Luanne lives with four cats in Arizona along a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare.
Michael Daley is the author of seven poetry collections. Ground Work, his eighth, will include "Sorry to Have Forgotten," and is forthcoming from Ravenna Press. His work has appeared in APR, Hudson Review, Ploughshares and elsewhere.
Iain Grinbergs is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press). He earned his Ph.D. in English from Florida State University. His work appears in or is forthcoming from Shō Poetry Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, Meridian, Screen Door Review, The Dewdrop, Hotch Potch, Ghost Parachute, FlashFlood, and other journals. He's online at www.iaingrinbergs.com.
Merie Kirby grew up in California, earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, and now lives in Grand Forks, ND, where she teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have appeared in Mom Egg Review, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, FERAL, Strange Horizons, and several other journals. She has also written operas and art songs in collaboration with composers. She’s online at www.meriekirby.com.
Jane Lunin Perel, poet and professor, was the author of five collections of poetry: The Lone Ranger and The Neo-American Church, The Fishes, Blowing Kisses to the Sharks, The Sea is Not Full, and Red Radio Heart. After earning an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1971, Perel began a four-decade teaching career at Providence College in Creative Writing, Holocaust Studies, and as the founding director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 2015. Before her death, Perel established the Jane Lunin Perel Poets Fund for Poetry MFA candidates at UMass Amherst.
Tala Wilder writes about personhood, erasure, and survival, especially when they coincide in family or religious environments. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has lived her entire life in the Pacific Northwest.
Nancy Holt Wright lives in Fort Collins, CO, where she teaches writing at Colorado State University. She has recently completed her first poetry collection, I Pick up Stones. It took longer than expected, as she is easily distracted by the crows in her backyard and the constant Colorado sun. She holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and has been published most recently in Crab Creek Review, Anacapa Review, and 3rd Wednesday.
Yan Zhang is a student currently residing in Hangzhou, China. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Shore, wildness, Shō Poetry Journal, and Rogue Agent, among others. She loves matcha lattes, taking long strolls in her neighborhood, observing the changing colors of leaves, and thinking.