Melissa Castillo Planas is an Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College. She is editor of the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets; co-editor of La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades; author of the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple; and co-author of the novel, Pure Bronx. Her current book project, A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City, and is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press. (In this issue: “Latinx Poetry in Nueva York.”)

Hannah Dion earned degrees in English and History at Boston University. Her work appears in Hawk & Whippoorwill and Clarion literary magazines. (In this issue: “Two Drawings.”)

Alexandra Găujan has an MA in Irish Studies from Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. A technical writer and translator, her work has appeared in journals including Revista Echinox, 2 Elefanţi and Zeppelin. (In this issue: “a confession, winter 2018” translated from the Romanian of Dan Sociu.)

Thomas W. Gross earned a degree in zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MD at Rutgers Medical School. He retired after practicing emergency medicine for over 20 years, and having earned the rank of colonel over twenty-eight years of military service in the Coast Guard and in the Air National Guard. He is a recipient of the Marin County Medical Society's award for medical columnist of the year. He has contributed articles to aviation trade journals, The New York Times, and the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute. Besides his study of creative writing in the UNH MFA program, he works part-time as a boat captain for the UNH Shoals Marine Laboratory, as a bush pilot, as a volunteer firefighter, and as a physician. His one-woman musical Crazy World, inspired by the life of singer Dame Julie Andrews, premiered in 2017 at the New Hampshire Theatre Project in Portsmouth. (In this issue: “Long Long Trail.”)

Allan Kolski Horwitz grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, living in the Middle East, Europe and North America before returning to live in Johannesburg in 1986. Since then he has worked in the trade union and social housing movements. He is a member of the Botsotso Publishing editorial board and is coordinator of the performing arts program for Botsotso schools. He has written and directed six of his own plays, and edited and directed the Botsotso Ensemble play Iziyalo Zikamama among others. His published books include the poetry collections Call from the Free State and The Colours of Our Flag and the fiction collections Out of the Wreckage and Meditations of a Non-White White. (In this issue: “Thoughts on the Spoken Word Movement in South Africa.”)

Chris Hughes is a queer poet, writer and artist in Somerville, Massachusetts. They are the music editor of Boston Hassle and have been published by Wilderness House Literary Review and Reality Hands. (In this issue: “Dreams.”)

Justin Karcher was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press), the chapbook When Severed Ears Sing You Songs (CWP Collective), the micro-chapbook Just Because You've Been Hospitalized for Depression Doesn't Mean You're Kanye West (Ghost City), Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire (EMP) with Ben Brindise, and Bernie Sanders Broke My Heart and I Turned into an Iceberg (Ghost City). He is the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX). (In this issue: “Dalton, Georgia”, “Mid-Ohio” and “Elegy for Anthony Bourdain.”)

Ben Mazer was born in New York City in 1964. He studied with Seamus Heaney at Harvard University, and completed his MA and Ph.D. under Christopher Ricks and Archie Burnett at the Editorial Institute, Boston University. His published collections include February Poems (Ilora), December Poems (Pen & Anvil), and The Glass Piano (MadHat). He is the editor of The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom (Un-Gyve), and the editor of The Battersea Review. His Selected Poems is forthcoming in the autumn. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (In this issue: “On ‘The Burial of the Dead’.”)

Marisa Silva-Dunbar earned her master's in poetry at the University of East Anglia. Her work has been published in Pussy Magic, Ginger Collect, Awkward Mermaid, Mojave He[art] Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic. (In this issue: “Do Not Leave This Earth.”)

Dan Sociu was born in 1978, in Botoşani, Romania. He belongs to the so-called Poets of 2000, who are often called representatives of "Miserabilism" by Romanian literary critics. He works as a translator and journalist, and has published more than ten books of poetry and prose, including Mouths Dried with Hatred (Longleaf Press). (In this issue: “a confession, winter 2018” translated from Romanian by Alexandra Gaujan.)

Vincent Toro's debut poetry collection, Stereo.Island.Mosaic., was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. He is also a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, and winner of The Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize and Repertorio Español’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award. Vincent teaches English and Latino Literature at Bronx Community College, is poet in the schools for Dreamyard and the Dodge Poetry Foundation, is writing liaison for The Cooper Union’s Saturday Program, and is a contributing editor at Kweli Literary Journal. (In this issue: “The Literary View from New Jersey.”)

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