BRIDEY MELMENSTEIN’s hybrid hermit-crab ekphrastic flash piece was written entirely in her phone’s Notes app in between readings at the KGB Bar while she nursed a milk stout. She lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, with Maestro, her French bullhuahua. Follow her on Twitter @brideofmelman, where she still uses a Mad Men Yourself as an avatar and hasn’t posted since 2012.
YOLANDA BOSBYSHELL is the founding editor of Post-Prandial: the Journal of Food Writing. Her writing has appeared in Elsewhere (the journal, not the catch-all term for “some other place”), Else/Were (a different journal, formerly known as Therianthropic Shapeshifter Quarterly, that specializes in speculative fiction), and elsewhere (some other places…we think?).
JEFFREY TEAGUE directs the Creative Writing Program at a small private university that bills itself as “the Midwestern Ivy” in its promotional materials. He is the author of “Aroostook and Other Stories”, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. That collection’s widely-anthologized title story—the one about the golf pro who evades the Vietnam draft by escaping to Canada during a round at a golf course that straddles the Maine/New Brunswick border–will serve as the basis for the upcoming film “Sand Trap”, starring the Rock and Kevin Hart.
TOINETTE REUTER holds the first-ever dual MFA in Fiction and Marketing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has produced high-quality evergreen content for the Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares, among many other satisfied clients. She leverages a social network of tens of thousands of followers, friends, and connections spread across dozens of platforms, and each journal she appears in has realized better visibility and enhanced optimization as a result of publishing her work. Links to her prose regularly lead the industry in organic reach and consumer engagement. To learn more about growing your journal’s audience and delivering a more meaningful and impactful brand experience, visit toinettereuter.com.
EMBRY JAMÓN sincerely hopes you don’t notice his piece is copied word-for-fucking-word from an old Mary Robison story that isn’t nearly as obscure as he needs it to be.
ERIC DUKE’s recent writing is forthcoming in Reindeer Cyclone, Baby Shoes, and Skulk of Foxes. He is the hot wind that whistles through the city streets at night; he is a steely-eyed pilot that has logged twelve thousand hours in the real, ugly, and unvarnished Truth. He has no fixed address.
JULIANA VAN WHY has been published dozens of times, but for some obscure reason our little journal has been rejecting her for years. Now that she has finally broken through, she will admit to being a little disappointed with the result. She’s not a huge fan of the website’s new layout–the switch to sans serif just screams amateur hour–and she’s pretty sure that the illustration we picked to accompany her piece violates copyright. And the poem itself? Hardly one of her favorites, much less one of her best. At points she actively hated writing it. Oh well.
JACOB APPEL is in here too, because of course he is.
DANICA BANK forgot to withdraw her story from the Southern Review and yesterday they sent her an acceptance, which she had to decline. After she got done emailing the editor, she opened up our site and typed her name in the search bar. Once she found her piece, she highlighted the whole page and copied and pasted the full text into a blank Word doc. Then she changed the font to Garamond and wept.
LILY SOBEK is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, an NEA fellowship, a grant from the New Mexico State Council on the Arts, and a digital coupon for one (1) free bean burrito from Taco Bell. All have been redeemed.
John Waddy Bullion’s writing has appeared in BULL, HAD, the Texas Review, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, and Vol 1. Brooklyn, among other fine places. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with his family. Visit him online at johnwaddybullion.com.