Poetry
Yanshuo Zhang
Yanshuo is a PhD student in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. Fluent in five languages (Chinese, English, French, Japanese and Tibetan), Yanshuo never ceases to see the beauty of life that strikes her everyday. Nature and the goodness of the human heart nourish both her imagination and her appreciation for this amazing universe.
Patrick Pfister
Patrick is the author of two books: “Pilgrimage: Tales from the Open Road” and “Over Sand & Sea.” His stories have appeared in various literary magazines and “Travelers’ Tales” anthologies, including “Best Travel Writing 2007.” His poetry has appeared in “Pearl,” “Juked,” “Blue Earth Review,” “Pilgrimage” and elsewhere. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.
Hannah Dow
Hannah is originally from New Hampshire. She is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Once she graduates in May, she is looking to pursue graduate studies in poetry. She someday hopes to teach Creative Writing at the higher education level and to share and foster a passion for poetry.
Daniel R. Schwarz
Daniel is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968. He is the author of the forthcoming Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times, 1999-2009 (SUNY Press) and the recent In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (2008) in the Blackwell Manifesto series. His books include Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004), Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture (2003), Imagining the Holocaust (1999), Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (1997), Narrative and Representation in Wallace Stevens (1993), The Case for a Humanistic Poetics (1991), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890-1930 (1989; revised 1995), Reading Joyce’s “Ulysses” (2004; orig. ed 1987); The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller (1986); Conrad: The Later Fiction (1982); Conrad: “Almayer’s Folly” through “Under Western Eyes” (1980); and Disraeli’s Fiction (1979). Schwarz has directed nine NEH seminars, and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad, including a number of lecture tours under the auspices of the academic programs of the USIS and State Department. He has held three endowed visiting professorships. He also has published about 75 poems, some of which are available on his web page http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/drs6/ and a little fiction. His former graduate students and NEH participants have put together a festschrift in his honor entitled Reading Texts, Reading Lives: Essays in the Tradition of Humanistic Cultural Criticism in Honor of Daniel R. Schwarz, University of Delaware Press, forthcoming.
Ryan Hall
Ryan is a senior undergraduate studying English literature at UCLA. In the future he hopes to pursue a PhD in medieval studies. His favorite poets include W.B. Yeats, Blake, Dante, Keats, and Spenser. Although by no means an exclusive list, other major influences on his thought and writing are Arthur Schopenhauer, Marcel Proust, and Zen Buddhism. Non-literary interests include philosophy, classical music and opera (particularly Wagner studies and post-Wagnerian works), Jungian psychology, and comparative folklore/mythology.
Chase Pielak
Chase earned his doctoral degree in 2011 from Claremont Graduate University in nineteenth-century literature. His criticism considers the intersection of literature and culture through contacts between humans and animals; his poetry seeks to elicit the genuine – what cannot be said. He currently teaches English at Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, and four kids. He writes at Starbucks.
Alyssa Ogi
Alyssa is a third-year undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, majoring in Literature. Her work has been previously published in Into the Teeth of the Wind, the Naugatuck River Review, Spectrum Literary Magazine, and Splinter Generation.
Lawrence Kessenich
Lawrence won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Cream City Review, Ibbetson Street, and other magazines. His chapbook Strange News was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. His new full-length book was a semi-finalist for the Off the Grid competition. Other chapbooks were a semi-finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and a finalist for the Spire Press Chapbook Contest.
Joseph Thompson
Joseph is a high school teacher and baseball coach living in Pasadena, CA with his wife and daughter. His poems will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of The Guidebook. His work will also be published in an upcoming essay collection from New Street Publications, titled, “Teaching J.D. Salinger.”
Emily Johnson
Emily is an English major currently enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Although she prefers fiction writing, this past summer she was an intern reporter for her hometown’s newspaper, the “Ripon Commonwealth,” and by the end of the summer over sixty of her articles were published. Writing is her passion.
Rimas Uzgiris
Rimas received an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark University, where he studied poetry with Rigoberto Gonzalez and Rachel Hadas. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His philosophical monograph, Desire, Meaning, and Virtue: The Socratic Account of Poetry, was published in 2009. Rimas’s poetry has been published in Bridges, 322 Review, Lituanus, Prime Number Magazine, The Poetry Porch, and is forthcoming in Quiddity. His translations have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, and are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Lituanus and Two Lines Online.
Prose Fiction
Philip Primason
Philip Primason is a writer and criminal investigator who lives in Harlem. He has worked in indigent defense for five years, makes films as part of the collective Dial Tone Pictures, and consults on capital legal proceedings across the country.
Pam Zhou
Pam recently studied Creative Nonfiction Writing, Fiction, and Cognitive Science at Brown University. (And a smattering of Egyptology too). All this has left her straddling a weird and wonderful divide between fact, fiction, and the art of speculative science. She thinks people are odd--and the better for it. It's a theme she'd like to continue to explore from the nexus of oddities that is San Francisco.
Jeremy Chow
Jeremy is currently a Master’s candidate in the English department at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Prior to his departure for sunny SoCal, Jeremy attended Boston College, majoring in secondary education and English. Following his graduation from BC, Jeremy returned to his native Chicago where he taught at a suburban, public school. Bewildered and beset by the current state of public education, Jeremy fervently sought solace in continuing his education. Jeremy ultimately aspires to teach at the university level. He intends to reform educational standards at the collegiate level, which currently likens scholar to educator. The two are not synonymous. Jeremy relishes in long hikes throughout the Californian terrain, low-brow sarcasm and humor, and observes a strict bedtime. His favorite foods include hot dogs and hummus, but never together. He does not take himself too seriously and genuinely abhors writing about himself in the third person.
Taylor Bundy
Taylor is a junior at Williams College, where she studies English and Philosophy. While most of her writing experience since high school has been in journalism—she has spent the past two summers interning as a staff writer at different newspapers and is a Managing Editor on The Williams Record—she has always been interested in fiction writing. In particular, Taylor is fascinated by the multiple-narrator style of Faulkner and the synthesized, often synesthetic perception created by such narration. Next year, she intends to write a thesis on Faulkner, arguing that his use of synesthesia demonstrates the individual’s inability to transcend his own perspective.
Drama
Matthew Gasda
Matthew is a writer living in New York City. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, where he studied Philosophy. Matthew’s favorite authors include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, and Anne Carson His preferred writing conditions include a rainy day, a clean kitchen table, and a pot of freshly made green tea. Matthew currently serves as the senior editor of Literary Laundry’s chapbook series.
Kevin Kane
Kevin is a writer living in New York City. He has had quite a bit of success as a playwright and as a singer/songwriter. He has made his living as a writer in one way or another for many years now. He has had many plays produced in New York City theaters, both off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway. He is currently making a living as a singer/ songwriter, performing in New York City clubs and colleges. You can find an extensive list of his credits on his website, www.Kanesongs.com.
Critical Reflections
Corey Tazzara
Corey is a collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in history at Stanford University. His research focuses on the free port of Livorno and the development of political economy in early modern Italy.
Will McPherson
Will McPherson is an independent man of letters based in northern California.