Preston Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and a winner of the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction for his collection of stories Churchboys and Other Sinners.  His work has been anthologized in Las Vegas Noir, Miami Noir, Brown Sugar, and numerous literary journals, including the Seattle Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Black Renaissance Noire.  His novels All or Nothing and Jesus Boy have received rave reviews from the New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, Kirkus, Library Journal, Feminist Review, AALBC, and Florida Book Review.

He teaches writing in South Florida.  You can find him on Facebook or on his blog, PrestonLaLLen.blogspot.com

Read Preston’s The Keys to My Apartment

Kim Barnes, nonfiction (Issue One)

Kim Barnes is the author of two memoirs and two novels, most recently A Country Called Home, which received the 2009 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction and was named a best book of 2008 by The Washington Post and the Kansas City Star.  She is the recipient of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for an emerging woman writer of nonfiction, and her first memoir, In the Wilderness, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including the New York Times, MORE, O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Fourth Genre, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. Her forthcoming novel, American Mecca, an exploration of Americans living in 1960s Saudi Arabia, will be published by Knopf in 2011.  Barnes teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.

Read Kim’s The Wages of Sin

John Dufresne, fiction (Issue One)

John Dufresne is the author of two story collections and four novels, most recently Requiem, Mass., and two books on writing fiction, The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? He teaches creative writing at Florida International University. His short story, “The Cross-Eyed Bear” will appear in Best American Mystery Stories 2010.

Read John’s Escape Velocity

Denise Duhamel, poetry (Issue One)

Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry include Ka-ching!, Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009 and 2005) and Mille et Un Sentiments, a limited edition chapbook (Firewheel Editions, 2005),  Queen for a Day (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001) and The Star Spangled Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999).  Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative Poetry (an anthology which Duhamel edited with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad) was published in 2006 from Soft Skull Press.  A winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she is a professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Read Denise’s Girl Talk

Lori Jakiela, nonfiction (Issue Three)

Lori Jakiela is the author of a memoir, Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette 2006), and three poetry chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Spot the Terrorist!, will be published in April 2012. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 5 AM and elsewhere. She lives outside of Pittsburgh, directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Chatham University.

Read Lori’s All of Them Would Hurt Someone I Think

Allison Joseph, poetry (Issue Two)

Allison Joseph lives, writes and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she’s part of the faculty in creative writing at Southern Illinois University.  She serves as editor of Crab Orchard Review, director of the SIUC MFA Program in Creative Writing, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, an annual conference for high school-aged writers. The author of six collections of poetry, she has received awards and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council.

Read Allison’sOde to the Naked Mole Rat and At Rochman Memorial Park

Geoffrey Philp, poetry (Issue Three)

Geoffrey Philp, author of Marcus and the Amazons and Dub Wise, teaches English and creative writing at Miami Dade College. Geoffrey publishes regularly on his blog (Geoffrey Philp’s Blog), and has begun an online petition for the exoneration of Marcus Garvey.

Read Geoffrey’s Erzulie’s Daughter, Beyond Mountain View, and A Poem for the Innocents

Matthew Sharpe, fiction (Issue Two)

Matthew Sharpe is the author of the novels Jamestown, The Sleeping Father, and Nothing Is Terrible. He has taught writing and literature at Wesleyan and Columbia Universities and in the MFA program at Bard College. His novel You Were Wrong was published last fall by Bloomsbury.

Read Matthew’s Golf

Dan Wakefield, nonfiction (Issue Two)

Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter whose best-selling novels Going All The Way and Starting Over were produced as feature films; he created the NBC prime time TV series “James at 15.” A documentary film has been produced of his memoir New York in the Fifties. His non-fiction books on spirituality include Returning: A Spiritual Journey, Creating from the Spirit,  The Story of Your Life: Writing a Spiritual Autobiography, Expect a Miracle, and How Do We Know When It’s God?: A Spiritual Memoir.

Read Dan’s A Lot of Barracudas
Read Dan’s interview