Sarah Barber’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Poetry, Juked, Fugue, The Journal, Georgetown Review, and Malahat, among other places. Her book, The Kissing Party, will be published in late 2010 by the National Poetry Review Press.

Emma Bolden’s chapbooks include How to Recognize a Lady (part of Edge by Edge, Toadlily Press), The Mariner’s Wife (Finishing Line Press), and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press). She was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Book Prize and a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship. She teaches at Georgetown College and is poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.

Traci Brimhall is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.  Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere.  Her manuscript Rookery won the 2009 Crab Orchard Series First Book Award and is forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press.

Anthony Carelli was born and raised in Poynette, Wisconsin—a no-stoplight rural village that smells periodically of sauerkraut.  He left.  In 2003 Anthony completed an MFA degree in Poetry at New York University.  Currently he is director of coffee at a savory pie shop in Brooklyn.  He has had a few poems accepted for publication in a few magazines including Columbia, Slice, and The New Yorker.  His first book of poems, titled Carnations, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Brock Clarke is the author of the national bestseller, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, as well as Carrying the Torch, What We Won’t Do, and The Ordinary White Boy. His work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, One Story, The Georgia Review, The Rumpus, and The Southern Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies; and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He was a 2008 NEA fellow for fiction. His fifth book, Exley, is forthcoming in September 2010.

Timothy Donnelly’s first book of poems, Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebensziet, was published by Grove Press in 2003, and his second, The Cloud Corporation, will be published by Wave Books this fall. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Boulevard, Gulf Coast, Harper’s, Iowa Review, jubilat, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Farrah Field’s poems have appeared in many publications including the Mississippi Review, Typo, Harp & Altar, La Petite Zine, Copper Nickel, Effing Magazine, and Ploughshares and are forthcoming in Mantis and Cannibal. Rising, her first book of poems, won Four Way Books’ 2007 Levis Prize. She lives in Brooklyn where she co-hosts a reading series called Yardmeter Editions. She blogs at adultish.blogspot.com.

An active chamber musician, violist Aleida Gehrels has been featured in both solo and ensemble recitals throughout the United States, Italy, Canada, Japan, China, and Mexico. She has performed with the Blackbird String Quartet, the Four Corners String Quartet, the Souvenir Sextet, and the Rogers String Quintet. As an orchestral musician, Aleida has served as principal violist for the Arizona Symphony, Sierra Vista Symphony, Tucson Chamber Orchestra, Rincon Chamber Orchestra, and Tucson Philharmonia Orchestra. She has also received honors in the Tucson Symphony, Tucson Civic Orchestra, and Tucson Philharmonia Orchestra Young Artist Competitions. Aleida currently performs as a member of the Beacon Street Chamber Players and the Roosevelt Flute Viola Harp Trio. Aleida is currently pursuing a Masters of Music in viola performance under Professor Roger Chase at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. She received her Bachelors of Music as a student of Professor Hong Mei Xiao at the University of Arizona.

Aleida plays a Chappuy viola, made in Paris in 1772.

Karin Gottshall’s recent poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, FIELD, and The Gettysburg Review. Her first poetry book, Crocus, was published by Fordham University Press in 2007. She lives in Vermont and teaches poetry writing at Middlebury College.

The violinist of the Castagneri Trio, Jonathan Goya has also presented recitals featuring a variety of chamber music with vocalists and string, wind, and piano players, and has premiered works for viola by Christopher Biggs, Gino Migliazza, Kevin White, and Brenda Willer. Jonathan has served in principal roles on violin and viola for several orchestras including the University of Arizona Symphony Orchestra, Northern Arizona Youth Orchestra, and Five Seasons Festival Orchestra. He competed at the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition, and was a finalist in the 2008 Beijing International Music Festival and 2007 Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competitions. Jonathan completed his Bachelor of Music degree as a student of Hong-Mei Xiao at the University of Arizona in 2008, and is currently studying with violinist Robert Waters and violist Roger Chase.

Jonathan’s violin was made in Paris by Andreas Castagneri in 1750, and his viola was made in Neukirchen by Carl Friedrich Ficker in 1807.

Megan Grumbling’s debut poetry collection Booker's Point received the 2015 Vassar Miller Prize, and is forthcoming from the University of North Texas Press in 2016. She is librettist of the opera Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, a co-creation with composer Denis Nye for Hinge/Works, which will premiere in May 2016. Awarded the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the Robert Frost Foundation Award, her poetry has appeared such places as Poetry, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets, and The New York Times.

Chris Haven’s poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Puerto del Sol, Threepenny Review, The Normal School, Pebble Lake Review, and Sentence. He is putting together a collection of poems and is also at work on a novel. He teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Mark Allen Jenkins has an MFA from Bowling Green State University and serves as poetry editor for the online journal Rougarou. His poetry has appeared in Faultline, REAL, minnesota review, Muse & Stone, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Dana Levin’s first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was awarded the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including APR, Poetry, and The Paris Review. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, Levin’s most recent book is Wedding Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Her new book, Sky Burial, will appear in Spring 2011.

Jill Maio is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in Ploughshares, Meridian, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She holds graduate degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia and Boston University, and currently teaches Creative Writing at BU’s Metropolitan College. Also a circus aerialist, she is the founder/director of an aerial acrobatics studio in Somerville, MA.

Eric Malmquist is a young composer who lives, performs, and composes in Chicago, Illinois.  He is a founding member of the Chicago-based Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles (SEMC) New Music Trio, and the founder of S O N G (Singers On New Ground, a group dedicated to contemporary American art song.  Eric was selected to be a Composer Fellow in the first-ever composer’s workshop at the Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, Washington in October 2008. While there, he won the Seasons Festival Orchestral Composition Prize, and his orchestral work Adventus was premiered by the Yakima Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Brooke Creswell.  His one-act opera Zoe had its stage premiere in April 2009 by Robert Katkov-Trevino and the Millennium Chamber Players. Upcoming premieres include a film score as part of Accessible Contemporary Music’s “Sound of Silent Film Series” in March, selections from his Chicago Songs on the next S O N G concert in May, and a choral work with the Wicker Park Choral Singers in July.

Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and REAPER, forthcoming from Alice James Books. She is the winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.

Karyna McGlynn’s first book, I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, won the 2008 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. She is the author of several chapbooks including the forthcoming collaboration Small Shrines (Cinematheque Press, 2010). Her poems have recently appeared in POOL, Lumberyard, Diode, Octopus, Columbia Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, The Journal and Forklift, Ohio. Karyna received her MFA from the University of Michigan and currently teaches at Concordia University. She edits L⁴: The Journal of the New American Epigram with Adam Theriault and lives in Austin, TX.

A native of Illinois, Kevin Reeks received his Bachelor’s in Music from Illinois State University studying with Gellert Modos, and pursued graduate studies at Roosevelt University with Ludmila Lazar. Kevin has participated in several summer youth music camps as a private teacher and music theory instructor and is active as a music teacher for numerous high school productions in the surrounding suburbs. Kevin devotes much of his time to performing chamber music as the pianist of the Castagneri Trio, collaborates with solo vocalists and instrumentalists, and also performs with various orchestras, choirs, and theater companies.

Joshua Rivkin's poems and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He has received a winter fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy.

Cellist Kyra Saltman has presented recitals across the country as a member of the Cicero Trio, the Erda Quartet, the Azore Quartet and at the Innsbruck Institute. Her orchestral highlights include performances with the Aspen Festival Orchestra, Aspen Opera Theatre Center Orchestra, Quad Cities Symphony, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, and the Eastern Illinois Symphony. She has also served as principle cellist of the Chicago College of Performing Arts Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed in conjunction with the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music at the Bowdoin International Music Festival.Programs she has participated in include the Aspen Music Festival, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Manchester Music Festival, Musicorda, the California Summer Music Festival, and the Austin Chamber Music Festival. Kyra holds degrees from the Chicago College of Performing Arts and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her primary instructors include Tanya Carey and Brandon Vamos. She has studied chamber music extensively with the Pacifica Quartet. Additional mentors include the Borromeo Quartet, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Kronos Quartet, and Atar Arad of the Cleveland Quartet. As a solo performer, she has won prizes in the University of Illinois Concerto Competition and has played in masterclasses for Richard Aaron, Jeffrey Solow, Andres Diaz, Emilio Colon, and Yehuda Hanani.

She performs on a English cello made by Thomas Smith in 1759.

Sandra Scofield is the author of novels, a memoir, and a craft book. She wrote her story after reviewing over 100 letters returned to her by a friend who had saved them since the sixties. Scofield lives in Portland, Oregon and Missoula, Montana, and is an avid landscape painter.

Samantha Stein recently starred as Susanna in Bay View Music Festival’s production of Le Nozze di Figaro. The Boston native currently has a budding career in Chicago’s exciting classical music scene. Favorite roles performed include Ernestine in Offenbach’s R.S.V.P, and Fortuna in L’Incorinazione di Poppea. Last year she was the soprano soloist in the Beethoven Choral Fantasie and covered the role of Flaminia in Haydn’s Il Mondo della Luna. She has participated in the Grant Park Chorus, earning an Apprentice Artist scholarship. Other professional engagements include singing with the William Ferris Chorale, and the touring performances presented by Opera Playhouse, an interactive K-12 educational outreach program, where she sings the role of Luella, the Big Bad Wolf, in Asten’s The Three Little Pigs. She holds degrees from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music and Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Jessie van Eerden’s work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, The Oxford American, River Teeth, and other publications.  She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and was awarded the Milton Fellowship at Image and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel,Glorybound.  Jessie teaches at the Oregon Extension of Eastern University and lives in Ashland, Oregon, with her husband, Mike.

Suzanne Warren graduated from the University of Florida MFA program in writing. Her short fiction and interviews with writers have appeared in Gulf Coast and Narrative. Her awards include writing fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ucross Foundation, Wyoming. She is currently a PhD student in literature and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.

Randall West’s inspiration spans from 20th century modernism to the baroque, Indian classical, Japanese folk, electronic, avant-garde, and popular music.  Randall received his Masters in composition at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts, where his instructors included Daron Hagen, Stacy Garrop, and Kyong Mee Choi.   He has been awarded fellowships by the Seasons Music Festival and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and was the recipient of the 2008/2009 CCPA Wind Ensemble Competition for Wayna Picchu.  His works have been performed by Palomar, Accessible Contemporary Music, the University of Illinois New Music Ensemble, and Chicago Opera Vanguard, among others.  His electro-acoustic work will be presented at the 2010 International Computer Music Conference in New York and at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.  Randall also works as a website programmer, and is a pianist and Taiko performer.  Website: www.randallwest.com

Quintan Ana Wikswo’s project-based works span a variety of forms including literature, printmaking, photography, performance and video. Deeply informed by social history of place, her pieces explore the liminal states of birth, burial, battle, worship and memory. Wikswo is a frequent contributor to Conjunctions and Denver Quarterly, and her texts appear in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, Confrontation and others. Her work shows at galleries and performance spaces through the United States, including the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Wikswo’s projects have been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is an artist with Catalysis Projects in Los Angeles. You can visit her website at www.quintanwikswo.com

The Issue 14 covers are part of a larger series, “Lynchburg Old City Cemetery.” Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the town of Lynchburg was founded by a family of planters named Lynch - the terms “lynching,” “lynch law,” and “lynch mob” all derive from their name and legacy. The Lynchburg Old City Cemetery was founded in 1806 and is the burial site for more than 15,000 people of African descent, both enslaved and free. From 1806 and 1895, the City Cemetery was the only burial ground open to African Americans in Lynchburg. It is now the oldest continually-operated public cemetery in Virginia, and a powerful repository of civil rights history.