masthead

EditorS-in-Chief

Dylan Hoffman is a writer, director, and translator based in Syracuse, New York. In his work, he seeks to discover novel combinations of text, image, and character that illuminate the sublimity and absurdity of everyday life. His directing credits include The End of the World (Brandeis University, Massachusetts) and Unstuck (The Tank, New York). He has assistant-directed shows for Trinacria Theater Company (Sicily, Italy) and the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, MA). In 2020, he translated a new adaptation of The Oresteia for the Sardegna Teatro (Cagliari, Italy). He is a 2020 Fulbright Italy English Teaching Assistant grant recipient. He is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University.

Lily Holloway is a powerlifting enthusiast and third-year MFA candidate from Aotearoa (a.k.a. New Zealand). They are a 2024 winner of the Griffith Review Emerging Voices competition, a 2024 CNZ grant recipient, as well as a pain in the neck. You can find their work published or forthcoming in various places including Black Warrior Review, Sundog Lit, Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Peach Mag, and Hobart After Dark. Their chapbook was published in 2021 as a part of Auckland University Press' AUP New Poets 8. Find them on Twitter and Instagram @milfs4minecraft or through their website lilyholloway.co.nz.

Managing Editor

Jo Clark is a writer from Virginia and a third-year MFA candidate at Syracuse. Her work can be found in Sundog Lit, Hooligan Magazine, Whale Road Review, Volume, and elsewhere. She is a 2024 grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and was selected as the artist in residence at Shenandoah National Park for August 2024. She was a finalist for the Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginian Poets, and received the 2024 Leonard Brown Prize. Before coming to Syracuse, she graduated from the University of Virginia. If you’d like to learn more about her work, please visit joclarkwriter.com.

Fiction Editors

Kira Yates is a third-year MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. She is delighted by oddity: her work sits at the intersection of humor and horror with its hazard lights on. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with degrees in English and Religious Studies in 2019, where she was awarded the Barbara Benson Short Story Prize and the Jean Sudrann '39 Award for her work in creative writing. In 2020, she published a nonfiction piece in Lilith Magazine. She is writing her first novel and works hard to give her cats and guinea pigs a happy life.

Hannah Nash is a second-year fiction candidate at Syracuse University. She grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Middlebury College. Afterwards, she worked as a tutor and freelance editor in New York City. Her fiction has been published by Indiana Review.

Elena Asofsky is a writer, poet, and second-year M.F.A. candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. They graduated with a B.A. and honors in English from Bryn Mawr College in 2021, where they were awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize. Elena grew up in Maryland, where they learned to paint and raise tadpoles. Their writing is concerned with otherness, humanity’s relationship to violence, and the many forms of love.

Co-Poetry Editor

Macks Cook (they/them) is a queer poet from Houston, Texas who recently graduated with their Bachelor of Arts in English from Trinity University. Their poetry is often concerned with animals, queerness, ekphrasis, grief and haunted houses. Their most recent work can be found in underblong, The Trinity Review, High Noon and Body Without Organs. They adore their cat, Boo, and large cups of watered-down McDonald’s Coke. You can find Macks on Instagram (@mothmacks).

Co-poetry & nonfiction Editor

Olivia Jacobson is an MFA candidate in poetry at Syracuse University. She is originally from Sheridan, Indiana. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing at Eckerd College in Saint Petersburg, FL in 2022. She is also a painter and stained-glass artist.

Art & Web Editor

J.C. Rodriguez is an increasingly reluctant poet from Long Island. His work has appeared in places like Waxwing, Meow Meow Pow Pow, Phoebe, and Brooklyn Poets. He exists online at brownmoon.rip, where he sometimes blogs about his misadventures through the realms of food and soda. He occasionally runs a zine about subcultures called Follow the Sea. Former lives include a clinical social worker, a puka shell necklace salesman, and a Hot Topic employee of the month in April 2012. He is NOT the TikTok finance guy. That guy doesn't put periods in his name.

Readers

Aliza Haskal (she/her) recently graduated with her B.A. in English and a University Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She has been published by Bullshit Lit, Zoetic Press, The Spectre Review, and The Lunar Journal. Aliza is a poet hailing from Charlottesville, Virginia, from which she has recently absconded to New York. Her poems viscerally and bravely crystallize experiences of mental illness, young love, subsequent heartbreak, and odd things she witnesses on the train. She also experiments with erasure and other creative media such as dance, art, and the piano. She served as lead poetry editor of the Rappahannock Review last year and participated in the NYU Writers in New York Program. Aliza’s upcoming work will be found in Applause Journal.

Maria Marchinkoski is a fiction candidate at Syracuse. She earned her BA from the University of Vermont and her MA in English from Harvard, where she is a PhD candidate. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Joyland, The Kenyon Review, The Millions, Washington Square Review, Quarterly West, The Carolina Quarterly, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, she was a recipient of a Mass Cultural Council Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellowship. She is currently writing a novel about impersonation, obsession, and the lives of trans women in Boston.

Lydia Podowitz is a writer of fiction, teleplays, and screenplays from Atlanta, Georgia. Now a first-year MFA candidate at Syracuse University, she received a B.A. in English and Film Studies from Rhodes College, where she was awarded the Anne Howard Bailey Prize in Creative Writing. She is looking for ‘the funny.’

Santiago Wilson Heredia is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction at Syracuse University. He graduated with a B.A. in Literary Arts and Behavioral Decision Science from Brown University in 2022. Since graduating, he has worked as a data scientist and quant researcher. He's originally from Peru but identifies as a Florida Man. His writing explores childhood, masculinity, and the psychology of goonishness.

Jennie Chen is a fiction writer from San Francisco and a first-year MFA candidate at Syracuse University. She received her B.A. in English from the University of San Francisco with a concentration in creative writing. Her psychological and dark fiction is primarily centered around mental health, substance abuse, and generational trauma. She is currently working on her first novel and enjoys horror films, Diet Coke, and carrying her cat, Effy, around the house like an infant.

Nabeel Chollampat is a third-year fiction candidate from the Bay Area. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and previously worked in podcasting.

Molly Jo Gorevan grew up in New York City. Before coming to Syracuse, she lived in Kathmandu and taught High School English in Brooklyn as an NYC Teaching Fellow. She is working on her first novel.

Jaden Ellison is a poet and nonfiction essayist from Huntington, WV, currently enrolled as an M.F.A. student at Syracuse University. He graduated from Marshall University with a B.A. in Creative Writing, where he served as Head Poetry Editor for Et Cetera, and received various departmental awards for his creative work. His writerly fixations often consist of linguistic / visual experimentation, ecological / social issues, family history, queer experiences, and Appalachian life.

Bee Brown-Sparks is a poet and essayist from Bloomington, Indiana. They graduated from Indiana University in 2023 where they graduated with a BA in Technical Theatre. They write about the people they love, Black aliveness, queerness, DIY punk, and limestone and the lake.

Kathryn Gilmore is a poet and current MFA candidate at Syracuse University. Her work explores themes of grief, Judaism, and coming of age as a young woman often set against the backdrop of the natural world. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but she has lived all over, including New England, the Midwest, and even Scotland and Italy. She recently graduated summa cum laude as a Gabelli Presidential Scholar from Boston College with a degree in English and a concentration in creative writing. While at BC, she served as communications director and senior editor of the Stylus literary magazine, and she received various honors for her creative endeavors and academics such as the Dever Fellowship. When not writing, you can find her working on a crochet project or playing the guitar.

Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina is a poet originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. She is an alumnus of UNC Charlotte where she received the Kurzeja Creative Writing Award in 2023 and graduated Summa Cum Laude. She completed a chapbook-length poetry collection entitled "Lovers, Resurrected" for her honors thesis and was awarded honors in English. Her poems have appeared in Roars & Whispers Literary Arts Magazine, Carolina Muse Literary Magazine, and Nova Literary Arts Magazine. Her poetry is driven by her Greek culture, ancient myths, various forms of art, feminist ideologies, and the aspect of womanhood. If you're interested in learning more about her and her work, please visit: https://sites.google.com/view/vasilikigkoulgkountina/home?authuser=0

Gabby Grinaway is a poet hailed from the Poconos, Pennsylvania and a first-year MFA candidate at Syracuse University. She graduated from Susquehanna University in 2023 with her BA in Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing. Her works are centered mainly around place, sound, and the sentiment of home.

Ella Peavler is a poet and writer from Indianapolis. Her creative work is closely tied with her past road trips and studies as a journalist, and she enjoys using poetry to report from places and times far beyond those which she calls home. She earned her B.S. in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize, and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Syracuse University.

Intern: Nicole Stevens
Founding Editor: Michael Paul Thomas
Advisory Editor: Jon Dee
Website Design: Ally Young, Ariel Chu
Design and Layout: David Wojciechowski

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