Daphne Cohen is a 24-year-old medical student currently studying in Christchurch, New Zealand. Over the last few years she’s lived in most of NZ’s major cities, usually by choice. She writes poetry and other flash fiction in her spare time (which she never seems to have enough of). Her backup plan is to live on a boat and sail around the world. She also has amazing hair.

Born in a log cabin in Virginia, Amanda McRaven directs plays and writes, for the time being, in Los Angeles. She is a Fulbright scholar to New Zealand and occasional stonemason, photographer, and stargazer. She has been published in New York ______. Magazine and muses at Stars In My Hands and Coffeeshop Heart, a blog about her constant detours to America’s most intriguing coffeehouses. Georgia In Her Mind, a memoir of the women she taught in the Virginia prison system, is forthcoming.

Joey Dean Hale is a musician and writer in the St. Louis area. He received his MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and has published stories and poems in several magazines, including Eureka Literary Magazine, Temporary Infinity Press, Red Booth Review, Marco Polo Arts Mag, theNewerYork, and Octave Magazine, which also has his song “High Noon” posted online.

Nicole Wolverton is a freelance writer from the Philadelphia, PA area. Her short fiction has appeared in Black Heart Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, and Trembles Horror Magazine. Her debut novel, a psychological thriller titled The Trajectory of Dreams, will be available in March 2013 (Bitingduck Press). Nicole is the moderator of the weekly flash fiction contest 5 Minute Fiction and founder of Farm to Philly, a website devoted to eating locally grown foods.

Chad Stroup is currently pursuing his MFA in Fiction at San Diego State University. His work has recently been featured in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Linguistic Erosion, and Educe Journal, and he will have a story in an upcoming anthology called Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms from Firbolg Publishing. He also runs a blog called Subvertbia, which showcases some of his short fiction and poetry.

Steve Castro’s work has been published in This Great Society (Canada), Hobart (print), Grey Sparrow Journal, Underground Voices, ASKEW, Splash of Red, Kindling, Scythe Literary Journal, The Broken Plate, the Dublin Quarterly (Ireland), The Tower Journal, Everyday Genius, Andar21 (Spain), Cricket Online Review, Phantom Kangaroo, Numinous: Spiritual Poetry, Chiricú, The Whistling Fire, etc. Herr Castro was born in San José, Costa Rica. He was raised in Santa Ana, Costa Rica and Evansville, Indiana. He has also lived in Israel, Germany, etc.

Kelsey Garmendia, 22, is an alumni of SUNY New Paltz. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. Garmendia has been published in the Stonesthrow Review, Poydras Review and twice in Midnight Screaming. Besides writing, she has sport photography published in The Little Rebellion.

Garmendia also played varsity volleyball for the New Paltz Hawks all four years of her college career. She was a Resident Assistant for the last two years of her college career.

Martin Cohen is a retired computer programmer who loves dancing (favorites are West Coast Swing, Waltz, and Tango), writing (but not revising) poems, and solving math problems.

Richard Peabody is a French toast addict and native Washingtonian. He has two new books due out this fall—a book of poetry, Speed Enforced by Aircraft (Broadkill River Press), and a book of short stories, Blue Suburban Skies (Main Street Rag Press).

Josh Crummer is a poet from the Tri-Cities of Michigan. Currently he is working on both an MA in Creative Writing and his first chapbook. His work has been featured in various magazines like Perceptions Literary Journal, Temenos, Bare Back Magazine, Cardinal Sins, and most recently, this one.

Anthony Isaac Bradley’s stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Ink Journal, Moon City Review, Cave Region Review, Elder Mountain, Main Street Rag and The MacGuffin. He was a finalist in the Moon City Review 2011 Short Story Contest, judged by Kevin Brockmeier. Anthony studies creative writing at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, where he occasionally leaves his room.

Gary Leising is the author of a chapbook of poems, Fastened to a Dying Animal, published by Pudding House Press. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Cincinnati Review, River Styx, and The Prose-Poem Project. His essays and reviews have appeared in Chicago Review, The James Dickey Newsletter, and elsewhere. He lives in Utica, New York, with his wife and two sons, where he teaches creative writing and poetry as an associate professor of English.

Mark Rosenblum—a New York native who now lives in Southern California—misses the taste of real pizza and good deli food. His work appears in Tiferet Journal, Boston Literary Magazine, Everyday Fiction, Six Minute Magazine, Short, Fast & Deadly, Sleet Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Vine Leaves, and Apocrypha and Abstractions. His ramblings also appeared in the anthologies: It All Changed in an Instant, Thinking Ten—A Writer’s Playground, Pure Slush Volume I, Daily Flash 2012, Six Words about Work and Six-Word Memoirs on Jewish Life.

Daniel Romo’s work appears or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Los Angeles Review, MiPOesias, Yemassee, and elsewhere. His first book of poetry, Romancing Gravity, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press. His second book of poetry, When Kerosene’s Involved, is forthcoming from Black Coffee Press. He teaches creative writing, and lives in Long Beach, CA. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.wordpress.com.

Thomas Griffin’s poetry has appeared in Pudding Magazine, The Pitkin Review, This Wood Sang Out anthology, Pivot anthology, Lotus.zine, Holly Rose Review, The Aurorean and others, as well as in the chapbook collection, Ordinary Life. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award and was recently nominated for a Pushcart prize for “The Passing.” You may find more about him at www.thomasgriffinarts.com. [Photo: Indra Tracy]

Roland Goity lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he writes in the shadows of planes coming and going from SFO. His stories can be found in Fiction International, The Raleigh Review, Word Riot, Compass Rose, PANK, and more recently in The MacGuffin, Menacing Hedge, Bluestem, and Underground Voices. He edits fiction for the online journal LITnIMAGE.

Patrick Kelling is a doctoral student in the Creative Writing program at the University of Denver and is the fiction editor for the literature magazine Gambling the Aisle. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and to Best New American Voices.

Thad DeVassie’s poems and prose poems have appeared in numerous publications including New York Quarterly, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, North American Review, Poetry East, West Branch, NANO Fiction, PANK Magazine, Fifty-Two Stories and Sycamore Review. A graduate of The Ohio State University and lifelong Ohioan, he operates a communications consulting firm in Columbus. He can be found among the Cowbird writing community by simply searching his name or his equally handsome portrait. (Handmade portrait credit: Holden DeVassie, age 8)

Other fiction by Daniel Maclaine can be found in Whistling Shade literary journal (print and online). He was a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Kids’ Reading Room before the fiction portion was discontinued. He has an 8,000-word short story (“The False Waking of Gwalchgwyn”) forthcoming in October in the science fiction and fantasy anthology Aoife’s Kiss. He is querying a novel and building a blog in his spare time. Write to him at danmacl84(at)hotmail.com. [Photo courtesy of Daniel Maclaine]

M. V. Montgomery is a professor at Life University in Atlanta who is equally prolific as a poet and fiction writer, having published a hundred fiction pieces and a hundred poems in a hundred different journals. He is the author of eight books, the most recent of which are What We Did With Old Moons (poetry) and Beyond the Pale (stories), both scheduled to be published soon by Winter Goose Publishing in Sacramento. Please see his sites at Winter Goose and WordPress.

Susan Pashman is a philosophy professor and the author of the novel The Speed of Light. Her essays, poems and stories have appeared in such journals as The Texas Review, The Portland Review, Dan River Anthology, Midway Journal, Burning Word and The Battered Suitcase. Her most recent story will appear in the next issue of The Indiana Review.

Tom Daley teaches poetry writing at the Online School of Poetry and the Boston Center for Adult Education. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Fence, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Barrow Street, 32 Poems, and Diagram and has been anthologized in Hacks: The Grub Street Anthology and Poets for Haiti. He recently reviewed Leslie Williams’ Success of the Seed Plants here. He performs his play, Every Broom and Bridget: Emily Dickinson and Her Servants, as a one-man show. [Photo: Nicole Terez Dutton]

Molly Bonovsky Anderson comes from Saint Cloud, Minnesota. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Northern Michigan University in 2009. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Passages North, Flashquake, Crab Orchard Review, and other print and online journals. Until she can make a career out of listening to records and taking photographs of other people’s lawn ornaments, she will continue writing. She currently resides on the shore of Lake Superior, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Sarah Wilson lives an often chilly life in Anchorage, Alaska. She is the author of two previously published short fictions, which are available for reading at the Every Day Fiction ezine. In her free time, she writes eclectically, reads more than is probably healthy, and attempts to dodge the moose.

Timothy L. Marsh is a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, Wales. Recent honors include writing fellowships from the CAMAC Centre d’Arts and the Can Serrat International Arts Center. His works have appeared in Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review, The Evansville Review, Dark Sky Magazine and The New Quarterly, and are indexed at timothylmarsh.com.

Naomi Krupitsky Wernham holds a B.A. in creative writing, aesthetics, and sensory experience from NYU’s Gallatin School. Her fiction, poetry, and academic writing have been published in various literary journals, in print and online. She lives in New York. For more, please see www.nhkw.net.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to a crisis center, which you can read about here. He is also the author of numerous chapbooks, including The Devil’s Fuzzy Slippers from Flutter Press and Personal Myths from Writing Knights Press. He has two other chapbooks forthcoming, Fog Area from Dog on a Chain Press and The Death of Me from Pig Ear Press.

Dan Crawley grew up in Southern California and now lives in Phoenix, AZ. His fiction was awarded an Arizona Commission on the Arts fellowship in fiction and nominated for Best of the Web. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the North American Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Emerge Literary Journal, Fiction Fix, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He has taught fiction workshops at various colleges and universities, including Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. He now teaches writing at Ottawa University.

Mira Martin-Parker is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva.

Writer, musician, photographer, model, Brad has published poetry in Cream City Review, Alchemy, Fireweed, “gape seed” (published by Uphook Press), Front Range Review, theNewerYork Press, and Mercury. His essays have been published in Brainstorm NW and N, The Magazine of Naturist Living; his erotica has appeared in Oysters & Chocolate, Clean Sheets and MindFuckFiction. A musician/lyricist since 1969, Brad was a 2003 Regional Semi-Finalist in the USA Songwriting Competition, and Honorable Mention in 1980 and 1981. He has exhibited paintings in galleries and coffee houses in the Portland area, and was showcased in the Cascade AIDS Auction catalogue in 1999. Living observation, in any genre, is poetry.

Chad Tracy is a writer and musician based in Austin, Texas. He has spent the last year sparring with a Texas Golden Gloves Champion, raising a five-year-old daughter and a cat named Moose, working on his third novel, The Governor Of Texas, and trying to find an agent and publisher for his second novel, The Boxer. He sings and plays guitar with the rock group American Roulette, the jazz groups The 34th Street Jazz Band and The Modern Trio, and teaches through the Informal Classes program at the University of Texas.

Michelle Joy is managing editor in chief of the Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, with publications therein as well as in Hektoen International, The Examined Life, and Connecticut Medicine. She has edited several published books, has written scientific articles and a pending novel, and was the 2011 Connecticut Geezers Book Award winner.

Eric Shonkwiler is a writer preoccupied with ruination. His latest work is published in [PANK] Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and Peripheral Surveys. More of his writing can be found at ericshonkwiler.com.

Henry Marchand’s fiction has appeared in Paradigm, The Seattle Review, The Laurel Review, The King’s English, Rosebud, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Review Americana, and elsewhere. He is the author of Writing Short Stories (a high school text), and of essays published in The New York Times, The International Herald-Tribune, Common Dreams News Center, and The Boston Globe. A New Jersey native and longtime resident of northeast Ohio, he now teaches creative writing at California’s Monterey Peninsula College.

William Cass has had thirty-seven short stories accepted for publication in mostly smaller literary magazines and anthologies. He is a former resident of Ohio, but currently lives and works as an educator in San Diego, California.

Patty Somlo was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where “Digital Camera” is set, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, was a finalist in the Tom Howard Short Story Contest and is the author of From Here to There and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, the Santa Clara Review, the Jackson Hole Review, WomenArts Quarterly, Guernica, Slow Trains and Fringe Magazine, among others, and in several anthologies.

Jeffrey Hammond grew up in Findlay, Ohio, and is Reeves Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. His work has won two Pushcart Prizes, Shenandoah’s Carter Prize for Essay, and the Missouri Review Editors’ Prize. His books include Ohio States: A Twentieth-Century Midwestern (Kent State University Press, 2002), Small Comforts: Essays at Middle Age (Kent State University Press, 2008), and Little Big World: Collecting Louis Marx and the American Fifties (University of Iowa Press, 2010).