Tessa Mellas's collection Lungs Full of Noise won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. An assistant professor at the University of Maine at Machias, she runs the Maine Writers Series. Her PhD is from the University of Cincinnati. She is working on an eco-fabulist novella in flash and a book of essays.

Gregory Howard's fiction and essays have appeared in WebConjunctions, the Collagist, Harp & Altar, and Tarpaulin Sky, among other places. He teaches fiction writing and contemporary literature at the University of Maine. His novel Hospice is forthcoming.

Julia Velasco is an MFA student at the University of South Carolina and she earned her MA in English from the University of Cincinnati. She writes fiction in English and Spanish, and she also translates to both languages.

Ron MacLean is author of the novels Headlong and Blue Winnetka Skies, and the story collection Why the Long Face? He holds a doctor of arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and teaches at Grub Street in Boston. His work has been widely published in journals and anthologies.

Laurie Foos is the author of the novels Ex UTERO, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist, Before Elvis There Was Nothing, and The Blue Girl, among others. She teaches in the low residency MFA program at Lesley University and in the BFA program ar Goddard College.