Chris Adrian is at work on a novel about magic. He lives in Los Angeles.
Ryu¯nosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927), born in Tokyo, Japan, was the author of more than 350 works of fiction and nonfiction. Japan’s premier literary award for emerging writers, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.
Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems—including A Doll For Throwing (Graywolf Press, 2017), Louise in Love (Grove Press, 2001), The Last Two Seconds (Graywolf Press, 2015), and Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2009), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award—and a translation of Dante’s Inferno (Graywolf Press, 2013). She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.
Remy Barnes’s fiction has appeared in Mississippi Review, The Southampton Review, Redivider, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from Cornell University where he teaches writing.
Cal Bedient’s fifth book of poems, The Breathing Place, is due out from Omnidawn in fall 2020. He is the coeditor of Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry & Opinion.
Brittany Borghi is an essayist and journalist from western Pennsylvania. She is working on her first book, a memoir about understanding the love you come from. She lives in the Midwest.
Michael Byers is the author of The Coast of Good Intentions (Mariner Books, 1998) and two novels, Long for this World (Mariner Books, 2004) and Percival’s Planet (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011). His novella The Broken Man (PS Publishing, 2010) was a finalist for the World Fantasy Awards. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan.
Izzy Casey’s poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Bennington Review, BOAAT, The Volta, Prelude, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a current recipient of a fellowship with the Poetry Foundation.
Lan Samantha Chang is the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Ryan Choi lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born and raised. His work has appeared in BOMB, Harper’s, Tin House, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. His other translations include the writings of Jun Tsuji, Shinkichi Takahashi, and Sanki Saito¯.
B. Domino received her MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. She currently resides in the Southwest with her family.
James Galvin has published eight books of poetry and two of prose. He teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Steve Gerkin was born near Sioux City, Iowa. Since retiring from dentistry (University of Iowa ’74) in 2010, he has published more than thirty essays and three books. He is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Steve lives with his wife Sue in a shaded, older neighborhood near downtown Tulsa.
Michele Glazer lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches at Portland State University.
Matthias Göritz is the author of three volumes of poetry, two novellas, and three novels—including Der kurze Traum des Jakob Voss (The Short Dream of Jakob Voss), 2005, winner of the Hamburg Literature Prize, Radio Bavaria Prize, and the Mara Cassens Prize—in German. He teaches in the program in comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis.
Emily Greenberg is an MFA candidate in fiction at Ohio State University. Her short fiction has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, J Journal, and Folio and placed third in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open. “Lost in the Desert of the Real” is her first published essay.
Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of nine books. His latest novel is True (Little A, 2018). He has written episodes of the television shows Ray Donovan and Cowboy Bebop.
Robert Hass’s most recent book is Summer Snow: New Poems from Ecco/HarperCollins. He is a professor emeritus of poetry and poetics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Brenda Hillman has published ten collections of poetry with Wesleyan University Press, including most recently Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018), which received the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Hillman was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2016 and teaches poetry at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Benjamin Krusling is the author of a chapbook, Grapes (Projective Industries, 2018), and a multimedia digital project, I have too much to hide (Triple Canopy, 2020).
Sarah Matthes is a poet from central New Jersey. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, where she received the Andrew Julius Gutow Poetry Prize. She has received support for her work from the Yiddish Book Center and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Feminist Utopia Project (Feminist Press, 2015), Yalobusha Review, Inkwell Journal, and poets.org.
Meg Mitchell lives in Portland, Maine. She received her BFA in photography from Parsons School of Design in 2007. Her photography attempts to explore and better understand the meaning and significance of universal human interactions and experiences by recreating moments and inserting herself into them.
Alberto Olmos is a writer and journalist from Segovia, Spain. In 1998, he published his debut novel, A bordo del naufragio (Anagrama, 2014), which was chosen as a finalist for the Premio Herralde prize. Since then, he has published seven more books. He currently lives in Madrid and writes a weekly column for El Confidencial.
Nina Perrotta is the editor of WWB Daily at Words Without Borders. She translates from Spanish and Portuguese and recently completed a Fulbright scholarship in Curitiba, Brazil.
Clinton Crockett Peters is the author of the essay collection Pandora’s Garden (University of Georgia Press, 2018), a finalist for the ASLE Book Award. He has been awarded literary prizes from Shenandoah, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Columbia Journal. His work has been noted in Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Science and Nature Writing. He holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of North Texas. He teaches at Berry College.
Emily Pittinos is a Great Lakes poet and essayist currently teaching in Boise, Idaho. Her recent work appears, or will soon appear, in the Denver Quarterly, Ploughshares, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. “Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm” is an excerpt from her book-length poem in progress; the section first appearing here, [I am, as often happens, next to me...], borrows language from Mary Ruefle’s “On Erasure.” To read more, visit emilypittinos.com.
Francine Prose is the author of twenty-one works of fiction, including Mister Monkey (Harper, 2016), Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (Harper, 2014), A Changed Man (Harper, 2006), which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel (Harper, 2006), a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (Harper, 2010), and Reading Like a Writer (Harper Perennial, 2007). She lives in New York City.
Marilynne Robinson is an emerita professor of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Ralph E. Rodriguez is a professor of English and American Studies at Brown University. His collection The Music Inside You and Other Stories is forthcoming. He is the author of Brown Gumshoes (University of Texas Press, 2005) and Latinx Literature Unbound: Undoing Ethic Expectation (Fordham University Press, 2018).
Kate Osana Simonian is an Armenian-Australian writer of fiction and essays. She’s currently a PhD candidate at Texas Tech. Her work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Chicago Tribune, and Best Australian Stories. Find her at katesimonian.com.
Eric Tran is a resident psychiatrist in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the author of the poetry collections The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer (Autumn House Press, 2020) and Revisions (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). His work is featured in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Lambda Literary Spotlight, and elsewhere.
David Trinidad’s most recent book of poems is Swinging on a Star (Turtle Point Press, 2017). He edited Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith and an Emily Dickinson divination deck, Divining Poets: Dickinson, both out from Turtle Point Press in 2019.
