Contributors’ Notes

Ben Bird has been published in The Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran, The Arkansas International, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of The Arkansas International’s 2024 Henry Dumas Prize for Fiction, and his work is forthcoming in their Fall 2025 issue. Currently, he’s working on the late stages of a novel and trying not to die. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Lora, and two dogs, Ari and Olive. Find him at birdwritings.com.

Tess Bloomfield is a poet and current MFA candidate at Temple University. Their work currently seeks to unpack gendered family dynamics through classical allegory, and grapples with the embodied experience of living under empire. She lives in Philadelphia with her partner, Tommy, and their cat, Imogen.

Kody Snyder is a writer living in Philadelphia. He is the vocalist for the hardcore punk band RASKOL and enjoys playing baseball in his free time. He’s also been published in BOXX Press.

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania who works as a financial director for a non-profit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly, including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His favorite subject is the sky.

John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Plume, Posit, and One Art. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House, Ballard Spahr, and Zone 3 prizes, as well as a semifinalist for the Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Neruda Prize and a three-time Pushcart nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.

Jacob Weil is a poet from Boston and an MFA candidate at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program. He is currently working on a book of poems that performs ekphrasis on contemporary music, primarily punk, noise, drone, techno, and metal. He is most interested in French and Spanish symbolism and surrealism, as well as the work of the American Idealists.

Macy West is a Philadelphia-based painter and art educator making work about hope not yet realized, using abstraction as a means of refiguration. Her paintings deal with sight, literally, and as a metaphor for knowing. She received her MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture in May 2025 and her BFA from Louisiana State University in May 2021. From 2021–23, Macy taught high school art and physics at a private school in Covington, Louisiana, an experience that reinforced the relationship between education and her artistic practice. Recent shows include her solo show Manifold at Temple Contemporary in 2025 and Fuzzy Forms, a group show in Stella Elkins Gallery in 2024 (Philadelphia).