Contributors

Shaun Rouser Cofounder and Coeditor in Chief

Shaun Rouser—writer, provocateur, contrarian, malingerer—is a cofounder and coeditor in chief of The Blackstone Review, where he also contributes fiction and nonfiction. His chapbook of short stories, Family Affair, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks, and his short fiction has appeared in Colloquium. More of his work can be found at shaunrouser.com, another of the Internet's vestigial organs, and his photography can be found at www.flickr.com/photos/shaundancekid and instagram.com/shaundancekid. Follow him on Twitter @shaundanceKid.

 

Eric Wilson Cofounder and Coeditor in Chief

Eric Wilson lives in Chicago where he splits his time between teaching, reading, watching or playing basketball, and chilling with cats. You can find some of his writing on the post-apocalyptic imagination at visionsaftertheend.blogspot.com. Eric occassionally makes music, which can be found at thespiritofspace.bandcamp.com and in The Blackstone Review podcasts. He also runs The Blackstone Review's Twitter account @BlackstoneRevue.

Ana Isabel Arroyo

Ana Isabel Arroyo is a poet, educator, community and family advocate, mother, wife, and daughter. Look up to the sky and you’ll encounter the essence of my reflection. Coming to the road of crossing paths, I find myself perplexed. What’s clear is the concept of simplicity.

Mark Belair

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East, and The South Carolina Review. His latest collection is Watching Ourselves (Unsolicited Press, 2017). Previous collections include Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015); Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013); While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013); and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times. Please visit www.markbelair.com.

Lana Bella

A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), and has had poetry and fiction featured with over 300 journals, 2River, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Journal, Otoliths, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review, The Ilanot Review, Third Wednesday, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others. She resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.

Nicole Bond

Nicole Bond is an Odyssey Project alum and the 2016 winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award for poetry.

Michael Chin

Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York, and writes and teaches in Corvallis, Oregon. He won the 2014 Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction from the University of New Orleans and has previously published fiction and poetry in over twenty journals, including Bayou Magazine, The Rappahannock Review, and Pacific Review. Find him online at miketchin.com and on Twitter @miketchin.

Judith Cody

Judith Cody’s poetry is published in over 110 journals, has won many national awards, and one of her poems was chosen for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts selected her poem from a competitive group from around the world for exhibition in a featured art gallery installation. Her poetry chapbook was a finalist in Bright Hill Press’s national competition. She has won Atlantic Monthly and Amelia awards; her poems were quarterfinalists in the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry and were cited for honorable mentions by the National League of American Pen Women. She edited the PEN Oakland anthology Fightin’ Words and wrote the internationally notable biography of composer Vivian Fine, Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography, and Eight Frames Eight. Her work is seen in many anthologies and poems appear in journals such as: Nimrod International Journal, New York Quarterly, Stand, South Carolina Review, Painted Bride Quarterly (forthcoming), Texas Review, Fugue, Clare, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Montreal Review, Fox Cry Review, Louisville Review, Madison Review, Phoebe, Quiddity, Primavera, Poet Lore, Poem, Xavier Review, Citron Review, Ignatian, Penmen Review, Splash of Red, Soundings East, Westview, Caduceus, Chaffin Journal, Arabesques Review, Laurel Review, Androgyne, Chaparral, Forge, Qwerty, Tiger’s Eye Journal, The Tower Journal, Cloudbank, Vending Machine Press, Willard & Maple, Third Wednesday, and others. Visit her at judithcody.com.

Guya Colton

Guya Colton is a security officer in Chicago, where she was born. She is a graduate of Bowen High School and Northwestern Business College. She enjoys writing poetry, reading, spending time with family and friends, collecting coins, doing arts and crafts, and traveling.

David Cordero

David Cordero lives and works in Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Inversion in Havana, re: a memo to peregrine staff in Mexico City, and Prolegomena at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City. His work has been featured in Hunter and Cook, the Chicago Tribune, and The Art Newspaper. Cordero was a teaching fellow at the University of Chicago, where he received his MFA in 2010. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007.

Colin Dodds

Colin Dodds is the author of Another Broken Wizard, WINDFALL, and The Last Bad Job, which Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have: a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” His writing has appeared in more than two hundred publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. Poet and songwriter David Berman (Silver Jews, Actual Air) said of Dodds’s work: “These are very good poems. For moments I could even feel the old feelings when I read them.” Colin’s book-length poem That Happy Captive was a finalist for the Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award as well as the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award in 2015. And his screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semifinalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter. See more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

Rosemarie Dombrowski

Rosemarie Dombrowski is the founder of rinky dink press, the cofounder and host of the Phoenix Poetry Series, and an editor for Four Chambers. She is the recipient of four Pushcart nominations and a fellowship from the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics for her Community Poetry Gardens project. Her collections include The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), which was the recipient of the 2016 Human Relations Indie Book Award for Poetry (Personal Challenge category), and The Philosophy of Unclean Things (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She teaches courses on radical poetics, women’s literature, and creative ethnography at Arizona State University’s Downtown campus. Additionally, she is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, Arizona.

William Doreski

William Doreski recently retired after years of teaching at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.

Thomas Gillaspy

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review, and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at www.thomasgillaspy.com.

Benjamin Goluboff

Benjamin Goluboff teaches English at Lake Forest College. Aside from a modest list of scholarly publications, he has placed imaginative work—poetry, fiction, and essays—in numerous small-press journals, most recently The Fourth River, Vending Machine Press, Bird’s Thumb, and War Literature & the Arts. His book, Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse, and Other Poems, is forthcoming in 2017 from Urban Farmhouse Press. Some of his work can be read at www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff.

R.D. Gregory

R.D. Gregory resides in Chicago, likes bright-colored hair, and has an electrifying spirit. As colorful on the inside as she is on the outside, she’s an avid reader and writer, and her life experiences, observations, and relationships serve as her muses. Her intuitive nature, vulnerability, and vibrant personality helps create depth and authenticity in her work. Her goal is to encourage her readers to reflect on their actions and challenge the state of our society. Writing helped save her life; reading her works may help save yours.

W.H. Holmes

W.H. Holmes is an artist, intellectual, archivist, historian who peers into the depths of infinitude to discern where the tide turns to stone. He is a man of myth, a man of legend, a man with no country, a man without a past, a man out of time whose literary and visual fabrications are testaments to impermanence.

James Croal Jackson

James Croal Jackson’s poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Rust + Moth, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. His first chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017) is forthcoming. He is the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest winner in his current city of Columbus, Ohio. Visit him at jimjakk.com.

Mark Magoon

Mark Magoon writes poetry, short stories, and secret songs for his dog. His publication credentials feature works of creative nonfiction and poetry that have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and Pushcart Prize. Magoon’s first book of poems, The Upper Peninsula Misses You, was released by ELJ Publications (2015). His work can be found in many places, including After Hours, Burrow Press Review, DIAGRAM, Midwestern Gothic, and The Nervous Breakdown, among others. Magoon makes home in the Windy City with a wife far too pretty and a bulldog named Kinnick. He currently serves as a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @MarkPMagoon.

Cameron Morse

Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. He is currently an MFA candidate at University of Missouri—Kansas City and lives with his wife, Lili, in Blue Springs, Missouri. His work has been or will be published in I-70 Review, TYPO, Otis Nebula, Sleet, Steam Ticket, Referential Magazine, The Bombay Review, Shot Glass Journal, Rufous City Review, Small Print Magazine, Two Hawks Quarterly, First Class Lit, Phantom Kangaroo, Cha, and District Lit. Follow him at Facebook.com/cshmorse.

t.j. peters

t.j. peters is a humorist and filmmaker dwelling atop a mount in Los Angeles. To alleviate the mind-numbing rigmarole of the entertainment industry, t.j. writes short prose and poetry, often relying on irony and paradoxes to examine things large and small in scale. In addition, t.j. considers himself an amateur falconer, though there is no evidence to support this claim. His recent work can be found in Westwind, UCLA's journal of the arts, and The Higgs Weldon. t.j. makes tweets as @tpeters, if you care about that.

H.L. Polk

H.L. Polk is a Chicago South Sider and a product of “Kississippi” (her mother was from Kentucky and her father was from Mississippi). She has been a creative writer since grammar school and writes poetry, stories, and speeches. She also journals her thoughts, dreams, and life experiences. She works full time, shares her life with family, and desires to write treasures and treasures of her “unspokiness” in depths of pages to be turned by the public.

Trisha Rezende

Trisha Rezende hails from the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. She has been in love with New Orleans, “the northernmost city of the Caribbean,” since she moved there in 2003 to earn her MFA at the University of New Orleans. She has taught composition, creative writing, and/or poetry classes at Dillard University and at the University of New Orleans. As a newer member of Xavier University’s English Department, she has enjoyed the abundance of bright and innovative students that attend this groundbreaking institution. Her poetry has been published in Poet Lore and Burlesque Press. Ms. Rezende loves to run and write with her one-eared chocolate Labrador, Soda Pop.

Cassandra Ricard

Cassandra completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Lindenwood University in June of 2015. She earned her BA at Keene State College where she minored in creative writing. Her flash fiction has appeared on the No Extra Words podcast and her lyric essays will be appearing in the spring issue of The Transnational. When not writing, Cassandra works as an academic advisor for students at a local university.

Joshua Rothes

Joshua Rothes is a Southern native living in Napoleonic exile in the Pacific Northwest. His debut collection, An Unspecific Dog: Artifacts of This Late Stage in History, is due out this fall via punctum books/Dead Letter Office. He is, assuredly, not Elena Ferrante.

Sarah Schiff-Berger

Sarah Schiff-Berger is a student at the City Colleges of Chicago. She plans on finishing her AA and transferring to a four-year college to get a BA in dance. Sarah has been studying dance for the past twelve years and is a member of the Joel Hall Dancers 2nd Company. Modern dance and ballet are her favorite styles of dance. In her spare time, Sarah works as a certified lifeguard and swim instructor at the Leaning Tower YMCA of Metro Chicago. She also volunteers at the Chicago Park District, where she assists with the dance programs at Indian Boundary Park.

Laurie Stone

Laurie Stone's fourth book, My Life as an Animal, Stories, will be published this October by Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. Her recent short fiction appears in Fence, The Collagist, Barzakh, The Offing, and Five on the Fifth. Her work has also appeared in Open City, Nanofiction, Threepenny Review, and Creative Nonfiction among other journals. To learn more about her work visit lstonehere.wordpress.com as well as Facebook and Twitter @lauriestone.

Joel Tomfohr

Joel Tomfohr has an MA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. In addition to his degrees, he participated in the Nebraska Summer Writer’s Conference (2005 and 2007) and the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute at Skidmore College (2010) where he was a full-tuition scholarship recipient. He has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont (2013), The Cultural Center in New York Mills, Minnesota (2014), and the Headlands Center for the Arts (2014-2015). His fiction has appeared in 580 Split, and sPARKLE & bLINK.

Millie Tullis

Millie Tullis is a student at Utah State University. In 2015, she won the Sandy River Review’s Undergraduate Poetry Contest. In 2016, she won the Elizabeth R. Curry Poetry Prize. She has been published in Profane, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Voices Project, and Mud Season Review. She lives in Logan, Utah, with her cat, Martin Heidegger.

 

Bill Wolak

Bill Wolak has just published his fifteenth book of poetry entitled The Nakedness Defense with Ekstasis Press. His most recent translation with Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Love Me More Than the Others: Selected Poetry of Iraj Mirza, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2014. His collages have appeared recently in Naked in New Hope 2016 and The 2017 Seattle Erotic Art Festival. In 2016, he was a featured poet at the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, Romania; Europa in Versi in Lake Como, Italy; Pesaro International Poetry Festival in Pesaro, Italy; Xichang-Qionghai Silk Road International Poetry Week in Xichang, China; and Ethno Fest in Pristina, Kosovo. Mr. Wolak teaches creative writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.