2021 Authors

Kate Wisel

Kate Wisel

Kate Wisel is the author of Driving in Cars with Homeless Men, winner of the 2019 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, selected by Min Jin Lee. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications that include Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Tin House online, Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, The Best Small Fictions 2019, Redivider (as winner of the Beacon Street Prize), and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the “Poetry on the T" prize and the Marcia Keach Prize. She was a Carol Houck fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and awarded scholarships at The Wesleyan Writer's Conference, the Squaw Valley Writer's Workshop, the Juniper Institute, Writing x Writer's at Tomales Bay and Methow Valley and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at Columbia College Chicago and Loyola University.

Selected Writings:

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Caitlin Horrocks

Caitlin Horrocks

Caitlin Horrocks is author of the novel The Vexations (Little, Brown), named one of the Ten Best Books of 2019 by the Wall Street Journal. Her story collection This Is Not Your City was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her latest story collection, Life Among the Terranauts was published by Little, Brown in 2021. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, Tin House, and One Story, as well as other journals and anthologies. Her awards include the Plimpton Prize and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the MacDowell Colony. She is on the advisory board of the Kenyon Review, where she recently served as fiction editor. She teaches at Grand Valley State University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her family.

Selected Writings:

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Becky Mandelbaum

Becky Mandelbaum

Becky Mandelbaum is the author of The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals and Bad Kansas, which received the 2016 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the 2018 High Plains Book Award for First Book, and was a Kansas Notable Book in 2018. Her work has appeared in One Story, The Sun, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, Hobart, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and has been featured on Medium. She has received fellowships from Writing by Writers, a residency from The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and was a finalist for the 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize in Fiction and the 2020 Nelson Algren Award. Originally from Kansas, she currently lives in Bellingham, Washington.

Selected Writings:

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Maria Adelmann

Maria Adelmann

Maria Adelmann's first book, Girls of a Certain Age, will be published February 2021. Her work has been published by Tin House, n+1, The Threepenny Review, Indiana Review, Epoch, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Alaska Quarterly Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. She has an MFA in fiction from The University of Virginia. She enjoys learning complicated new crafts and letting personal projects take over her life. A longtime resident of Baltimore, Adelmann recently moved to Copenhagen after getting stuck there during the pandemic.

Selected Writings:

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Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall

​​Traci Brimhall is the author of four collections of poetry: Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon Press); Saudade (Copper Canyon Press); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery(Southern Illinois University Press), selected for the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her children's book, Sophia and The Boy Who Fell, was published by SeedStar Books, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares, Orion The Believer, The Nation, and The New Republic. Her essays have appeared in Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Gulf Coast. Some of her work has also been featured on PBS Newshour and Best American Poetry 2013 and 2014. She works as an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University.

Selected Writings:

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Nomi Stone

Nomi Stone

Nomi Stone is a poet and an anthropologist, and the author of two poetry collections, Stranger's Notebook (TriQuarterly) and Kill Class (Tupelo)—a book based on two years of fieldwork she conducted within war trainings in mock Middle Eastern villages erected by the US military across America. A former Fulbright scholar and winner of a Pushcart Prize, her poems appear recently in POETRY Magazine, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Best American Poetry, Tin House, New England Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, her poem, “War Poem" was turned into a film in Motion Poems Season 8, “Dear Mr. President," and her anthropological articles appear in Cultural Anthropology and American Ethnologist. Stone has an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson, a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia, and an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford. Formerly a postdoctoral research fellow in Anthropology at Princeton University, Stone is currently an associate professor UT Dallas.

Selected Writings:

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Christine Stewart-Nuñez

Christine Stewart-Nuñez

​​Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota's poet laureate, is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Untrussed and Bluewords Greening, winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize. She's written several award-winning essays and co-edited two books that feature both literary and scholarly contributions on their subject matter: Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens and Action, Influence, Voice: Contemporary South Dakota Women. In 2019, the South Dakota Council of Teachers of English named her author of the year. As a professor at South Dakota State University, Christine's teaching, creative work, and service has earned several awards, including the Dr. April Brooks Woman of Distinction Award (2020), the Outstanding Experiential Learning Educator (2019), and the F. O. Butler Award (2017). She served on the board of directors for the South Dakota State Poetry Society from 2012-2018 and edited its poetry magazine, Pasque Petals, from 2014-2018. She's the founder of the Women Poets Collective, a regional group focused on advancing their writing through peer critique and support.

Selected Writings:

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Stephanie Lenox

Stephanie Lenox

Stephanie Lenox is the co-author of Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology with H.K. Hummel. Her most recent poetry collection, The Business, was selected as the winner of the 2015 Colorado Prize in Poetry. She is the author of Congress of Strange People, and a chapbook, The Heart That Lies Outside the Body, winner of the Slapering Hol Chapbook Competition. She lives with her family in Salem, Oregon, and works as an editor at Chemeketa Press.

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Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy is the author of four novels, including The Dark Net, The Dead Lands, Red Moon and The Wilding, as well as three books of short stories, including Suicide Woods and Refresh, Refresh. His craft book, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, was published in 2016. His next novel, The Ninth Metal: Book I of the Comet Cycle, will be published in June of 2021. He broke in to comics with a two-issue Batman story arc for Detective Comics. He is known for runs on Wolverine, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Teen Titans, and James Bond. He is part of the new dawn of X-Men at Marvel and currently writes Wolverine and X-Force. His fiction and nonfiction had appeared on NPR and in Esquire, GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and Tin House. His honors include and NEA fellowship, the Whiting Writers' Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the Plimpton Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. He is a member of the WGA screenwriters' guild and has sold scripts to Paramount, FOX, and Starz. He currently has several film and TV projects in development.

Selected Writings:

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: in Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble's Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

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Ross Gay

Ross Gay

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books, and he is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project, and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.

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Tim Seibles

Tim Seibles

Tim Seibles is the author of six collections of poetry, including Body Moves (1988), Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), Hammerlock (1999), Buffalo Head Solos (2004), and Fast Animal (2012), which won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was nominated for a 2012 National Book Award. His latest work of poetry, One Turn Around the Sun was published by Etruscan Press in 2017. His poems has been published in the Indiana Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Cortland Review, Ploughshares Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. Seibles lives and is professor emeritus at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Selected Writings

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Jill McCorkle

Jill McCorkle

Jill McCorkle's first two novels were released simultaneously when she was just out of college, and the New York Times called her "a born novelist". Since then, she has published six novels and four collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories several times, as well as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, The Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

Selected Writings:

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Brian Turner

Brian Turner

Brian Turner is a poet and memoirist who served seven years in the US Army. He is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise and Here, Bullet, which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times "Editor's Choice" selection, the 2006 PEN Center USA "Best in the West" award, the 2007 Poets Prize, and others. In addition to his poetry, he is the editor of the anthology The Kiss (2018), a diverse anthology of essays, stories, poems, and graphic memoirs. Turner's work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, Poetry Daily, Harper's Magazine, and other fine journals. Turner has been awarded a United States Artists Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and more. His recent memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, has been called, "achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful."

Selected Writings:

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Molly Antopol

Molly Antopol

Molly Antopol's debut story collection, The UnAmericans, won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. The book was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the National Jewish Book Award and the California Book Award, among others. She's the recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, where she currently teaches. She lives in San Francisco, and is at work on a novel, The After Party, which will also be published by Norton.

Selected Writings:

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Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.

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Matthew Dickman

Matthew Dickman

​​​Matthew Dickman was raised by his mother in the Lents neighborhood of Southeast Portland along with his sister Elizabeth and twin brother, the poet Michael Dickman. After studying at Portland Community College and the University of Oregon, he earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center. He was the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Book Award and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. Dickman is the author of three full length collections, All American Poem, which won the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, Mayakovsky's Revolver, and Wonderland; and co-author, with Michael Dickman, of 50 American Plays and Brother. He is also the author of four chapbooks: 24 Hours, Wish You Were Here, Amigos, and Something About a Black Scarf. Currently, he teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency MFA program and write advertisements for a living. He lives in London, United Kingdom with his partner and two children.

Selected Writings:

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Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013, and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on PRI’s “This American Life”and “Selected Shorts”. She lives in Los Angeles with her family, and teaches creative writing at USC.

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Todd Kaneko

Todd Kaneko

Todd Kaneko is the author of This is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies, which will be rereleased as a second edition by New Michigan Press in 2021. He is co-author with Amorak Huey of Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), and Slash / Slash, winner of the 2020 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest, which will be published in summer, 2021. His poems, essays, and stories can be seen in Poetry, Alaskan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, The Normal School, Hobart, [PANK], Blackbird, The Rumpus, Bring the Noise: The Best Pop Culture Essays from Barrelhouse Magazine, Best Small Fictions 2017 and 2018, and many other journals. A Kundiman fellow, his work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Originally from Seattle, he is currently an Associate Professor in the Writing Department at Grand Valley State University and lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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