february 25

Brendan C. Byrne was born in the District of Columbia but has lived most of his adult life in New York City. He has published three novellas: The Showing of the Instruments (2011), The Training Commission (2019, with Ingrid Burrington) and Accelerate (2021). His collection of short stories, Another World Isn't Possible, appeared in 2025 from Wanton Sun 

Ilise S. Carter is a freelance writer and performer based in New York City. She has written for Allure, New York Times, Washington Post, and others. In addition, she’s spent over a decade as a consulting copywriter for companies such as Shiseido, bliss, L’Oréal, and Madame CJ Walker. Her first book, The Red Menace: How Lipstick Changed the Face of American History from Prometheus Books, has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NY Post, and Publishers Weekly. Her book on the long-term impact of the spiritualist movement, When We Spoke to the Dead: How Ghosts Gave American Women Their Voice (Sourcebooks 2025) was also called “a savvy take” by PW. As her stage persona, The Lady Aye, she has worked as sideshow performer with acts ranging from Rob Zombie to Cirque du Soleil and has appeared on Gossip Girl, Oddities, The President Show, Mysteries at the Museum, and Dickinson. She is also the founder of the Coney Island Book Fair.

Jonathan Dixon is the author of Convergence (26th Street Books) and Beaten, Seared, and Sauced (Random House). He was a longtime contributor to the Boston Phoenix, and his articles have appeared in Vice, The New York Times, New York Newsday, Conde Nast Traveler, and Martha Stewart Living, among others. He lives in New York City with his family.

Nhu An Do is a recovering healing workshop junkie. She is a writer, performer and her credits include Moth Story Slams and Grand Slams, Generation Women, Out By 10 and various performances at the Pit Theater in NYC.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two small humans and a dog.

Guest co-host Colin Dickey is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and, most recently, Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. He lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

 JANUARY 28

Simona Blat is a writer living in Brooklyn and the owner of Black Spring Books, an independent used bookshop and social space in Williamsburg. 

Caroline Hagood is the author of eight books, most recently Weird Girls: Writing the Art Monster, Death and Other Speculative Fictions, and Goblin Mode: A Speculative Memoir. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, the Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and Elle. Caroline Hagood is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Writing, and Publishing and Director of Undergraduate Writing at St. Francis College. 

Francisco Márquez is a Venezuelan poet with work in The Yale Review, Poetry London, Best American Poetry, and The Slowdown podcast. The recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, UCross, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he lives in Brooklyn.

Keith Newton is the author of the poetry collection Revolutions Among Us, forthcoming from Winter Editions, as well as a short work of prose from Essay Press, A Week of Kindness, based on the collages of Max Ernst. His writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Typo, and 1913, among others, and he edits the online literary magazine Harp & Altar. He is also one of the filmmakers behind the forthcoming documentary series The Fourth Wall, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival in 2023. He lives in Brooklyn.

Guest host Ben Lasman’s fiction has been published in Granta, Tin House, Wired, Zyzzyva, The Iowa Review, and Harp & Altar. He is online manager for Library of America. 

december 16

Josh Boardman is from Michigan. He is the author of the chapbooks Colossal (2025-present), Plantain (West Vine Press, 2018), and the Latin translation project We, Romans (2015). His work was shortlisted in the 2025 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration, selected as a finalist in the 2024 Fugue Prose Prize, and his stories have appeared in journals such as New York Tyrant, Catapult, and Dandruff Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is working on his second novel and a collection of stories about his hometown.

Ry Cook is a Brooklyn-based poet/performer who is interested in the aesthetic potential of cringe. Their work has been published in the New Republic, the Baffler, Brooklyn Rail, Peel Lit, BOMB, Iterant, Archway Editions, and others. Their first chapbook, Freak of Nature, came out through Choo Choo Press this past year,  Their second, ASUSHUNAMIR, is out early next year through Blue Bag Press. 

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a Reese’s Book Club Pick longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the award-winning novel Olga Dies Dreaming, named a Best of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she was recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary. Her forthcoming novel, Last Night in Brooklyn, is out on April 21, 2026 with Flatiron Books.

Anne-E. Wood is a fiction writer who lives in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in many journals, including New Letters, TLR, No Tokens, Chicago Quarterly Review and most recently in The Colorado Review. Her stories have been notable mentions in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Series and in the latest Pushcart Prize Anthology. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University and is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at Rutgers Newark. 

Rachel Lyon is the author of Self-Portrait with Boy, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize; and Fruit of the Dead, a finalist for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize named a best book of 2024 by Oprah Magazine, Elle, and other outlets. Rachel’s short stories have appeared in One Story, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and other publications. She has taught at institutions including Bennington College and the American University of Paris, where she was the 2024 Paris Writer in Residence. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.

  November 19

Deena ElGenaidi is a writer and editor in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, Dust Settles North, comes out on September 30. Deena’s writing has been published in Vulture, Insider, Nylon, Salon, Electric Literature, and more. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden and her MA in English from Villanova University.

Laura Venita Green holds an MFA in fiction and translation from Columbia University, where she was an undergraduate teaching fellow. Her fiction won the Story Foundation Prize, received two Pushcart Prize special mentions, and has appeared in Story, the Missouri Review, Joyland, and Fatal Flaw. She grew up in Germany and rural Louisiana and currently lives with her husband in New York City. Sister Creatures, an October Indie Next pick, is her debut novel.

Eve M. Kahn, an independent scholar, is a regular contributor to The New York Times. Her new book Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris (Fordham U. Press) has been called "a daring story told with exceptional verve" (Amy Reading, Pulitzer finalist biographer of New Yorker editor Katharine White). She is also author of the award-winning 2019 monograph Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857–1907 (Wesleyan U. Press). For more info: evekahn.com.

OCTOBER 22

Megan Cummins is the author of the story collection If the Body Allows It, which was awarded the 2019 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and longlisted for the Story Prize and the PEN/Bingham Award, as well as the novel Atomic Hearts, published earlier this year by Ballantine. She is the managing editor of Public Books and an editor at large at A Public Space.

Tierney Oberhammer is a writer based in New York's Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Swamp Pink, The Adroit Journal, Aster(ix), Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Callaloo Literary Journal, and River Teeth. Tierney is the recipient of generous support from the Nancy Craig Blackburn Program, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Indiana University Writer’s Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Tierney is also an Anthony Veasna So scholar and co-founded the Wildcat Writing Group. She lives with Jamie, Mariah and Wavy.

Kailee Pedersen is the author of the novel Sacrificial Animals (St. Martin’s, 2024) and the poetry chapbook Pastorale (Burnside Review Press, 2025). A graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in Classics, she was adopted from Nanning in 1996 and grew up in Nebraska. Her writing on LGBTQ+ and Asian American themes was awarded an Artist Fellowship by the Nebraska Arts Council in 2015. Sacrificial Animals was named a “Best Horror Book of 2024” by The New York Times, Vulture, Esquire, Paste Magazine, and Barnes & Noble; a “Best Gothic Fiction of 2024” by CrimeReads; a “Best Book for Adults” by the New York Public Library; a Best Horror finalist for the Libby Book Awards; Fiction Honor recipient at the Nebraska Book Awards; and longlisted for the Otherwise Award. Her second novel, The Minimalist, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s in 2026. kaileepedersen.com

Anna Rasche is an author, gemologist, and historian who has previously worked in the jewelry collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her debut novel, The Stone Witch of Florence, was an October 2024 Indie Next pick, and was recommended by the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, BookRiot and many others. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CrimeReads, and elsewhere.

She is currently working on her second novel, The Midnight Diamond, forthcoming from HarperCollins/Park Row.

SEPTEMBER 24

Kerry Cullen’s debut novel, House of Beth, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2025 and named a New York Times Editors' Choice. Her short fiction has been published in The Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, One Teen Story, and more. She earned her MFA at Columbia University, and she lives in New York.

Allison C. Meier is a writer, editor, and researcher on art, culture, and history. Her book Grave was published in 2023 by Bloomsbury as part of the Object Lessons series. She is the editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine and has bylines in the New York Times, CityLab, National Geographic, Smithsonian, the Art Newspaper, and many other publications. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide and avid zine maker.

Patrick Ryan's first book, a collection of linked short stories called Send Me, was chosen for Barnes and Noble's Discovery Series. His second collection, The Dream Life of Astronauts, was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch and Electric Literature and was long-listed for The Story Prize. He's also published three books for young adults, and his work has been included in The Best American Short Stories. The former associate editor of Granta, Patrick is the editor of One Story and One Teen Story. His novel Buckeye came out on September 2nd of this year. 

Cherry Lou Sy is a writer and playwright originally from the Philippines. Her debut novel Love Can't Feed You (Dutton, 2024) is an Amazon Editor's Best Book pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week pick, and was featured in Real Simple, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. She is a magna cum laude graduate from the Gallatin School at NYU with a BA in Cultural Studies, and a graduate of the MA English Literature and MFA Playwriting programs at Brooklyn College. Selected works appeared in Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, and Electric Lit. She is also a Tin House and VONA alum and is currently one of The Adroit Journal's fiction editors.

JULY 23

Belle Ling was born and raised in Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her poetry manuscripts were respectively shortlisted for the HKU International Poetry Prize, highly commended for the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for the First Book Poetry Prize of Puncher and Wattmann. Her poem, “63 Temple Street, Mong Kok,” was a co-winner in the Peter Porter Poetry Prize held by the Australian Book Review. Her other poem, “That Space,” won a second place in the ESL category of the International Poetry Competition organized by the Oxford Brookes University. Her poems can be found in Chicago Quarterly Review, World Literature Today, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Yuan Yang, Meanjin, Overland, Mascara Literary Review, and more. She is now working as a creative strategist at the HKU Guild. Belle Ling will be participating in the reading remotely.

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a communist poet, educator, organizer, & romantic in revolt. His first book, murmurations, is out with YesYes Books. He believes in a Free Palestine (& thinks you should too) & hails from Brooklyn, where he lives with his cat, Dilla.

Heather McCalden is a writer and artist based in New York City. The Observable Universe, her debut memoir was published concurrently by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK), Hogarth Books (US), and Editorial Sigilo (Argentina/Spain). She is the recipient of the 2021 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, and was a fellow at the Banff Center of the Arts Leighton Studio Residency. Her work can be found on Lithub, and the Financial Times (UK). 

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, which was a finalist for the Story Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College. His writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Slate, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Originally from Southern California, he now lives in Queens. Archive of Unknown Universes is his first novel.

JUNE 25

Kristina Andersson Bicher is the author of Heat, Sob, Lily (MadHat Press, 2025) and She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020), and Just Now Alive (2014), as well as the translator of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s full-length collection I walk around gathering up my garden for the night  (Bitter Oleander Press 2020).

Her poetry appears in literary journals including AGNI, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry, and Narrative.  Her translations and nonfiction have appeared in The Atlantic, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review and others.

She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Mac Crane is a basketball player, sweatpants enthusiast, and the author of the novels, A Sharp Endless Need and I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, the latter of which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next pick, and winner of a LAMBDA Literary Award. They have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and Vermont Studio Center, and their short work has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere. Originally from Allentown, PA, they currently live in San Diego with their family.

James Stewart III is a Black writer and arts organizer from Chicago. His debut novel, Defiant Acts, was recently released by Acre Books in May 2025. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Lampblack, Zone 3, Midwest Review, The Forge, and 580 Split. He co-founded the reading series and artist collective Exhibit B. Stewart earned an MFA from SAIC, an MA from North Central College, and a BA from Columbia College Chicago. He lives with his wife and daughter at the end of Dusable Lake Shore Drive.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of the novels A/S/L and Summer Fun (winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction), as well as other books. She is the current senior editor of Feminist Press, the copublisher of Instar Books, and the cohost of Brooklyn's World Transsexual Forum open mic. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Harper's Bazaar, WIRED, Evergreen Review, and other places. She lives in Brooklyn and more information is available at jeannethornton.com. Photo credit: Rowan Levy

May 28

Andrew E. Colarusso is the owner of Taylor & Co. Books and many other griefs (blessings too, it's true).  

Brian Gresko is a writer, illustrator, literary journalist, and educator based in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. They co-host Pete's Reading Series, Brooklyn's longest running literary venue, and co-founded Writing Co-Lab, an online teaching cooperative. Earlier this year, they curated 100 Days of Creative Resistance, which sent an email a day from a different writer on each of the first 100 days of the Trump regime. They recently published You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity, a book of letters on why to write and how to keep at it in a world that wants you to shut the hell up.

Leila Taylor is a Brooklyn-based writer, speaker, and designer whose work focuses on the intersection of history and horror and the gothic in contemporary culture. Author of Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread and Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul, her essays have appeared in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay, The Repeater Book of the Occult, The New Urban Gothic, and the graphic novel Bitter Root.  

Shayne Terry's work has appeared in CRAFT, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere, and her story The Rock Is Not a Rock was included as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2024. Leave: A Postpartum Account (Autofocus Books, 2025) is her first book. Shayne has been selected for workshops and residencies at Bread Loaf, CRIT, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center. Born and raised in northern Illinois, she received an M.A. in Literature from University College Dublin and lives in Brooklyn. Find more of her work at shayneterry.com.

APRIL 23

Diane Mehta was born in Frankfurt and grew up in Bombay and New Jersey. She is the author of the essay collection Happier Far (UGA Press 2025) and two poetry books: Tiny Extravaganzas (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and Forest with Castanets (Four Way Books, 2019). She has written for The New Yorker, VQR, Kenyon Review, and A Public Space. Her writing has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation and fellowships at Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, and VCCA. She was an editor at A Public Space, PEN America, and Guernica. She is poet in residence at the New Chamber Ballet in New York City. She was a judge for the 2024 Arrowsmith-Derek Walcott Poetry Prize and for the 2025 Silvers-Dudley prizes (NYRB Silvers Foundation) for literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism.

JoAnna Novak is the author of seven books, most recently, Domestirexia: Poems. Her short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is also the author of the memoir, Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood; the novel I Must Have You; and three additional books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications. 

Timothy Ree is the author of BEASTING (2022), a debut collection of poetry conceived during the pandemic, both surreal & grounded in the particularities of Korean American experience, exploring race, politics, & family dynamics at the height of the plague where anti-Asian rhetoric & violence found its way around the globe. The son of Korean immigrants, Tim teaches literature & writing at a public high school in Brooklyn. He has received grants & fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cave Canem, Poets House, Academy for Teachers, & the Bread Loaf School of English. He is at work on his second collection of poetry.

Anton Solomonik is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Lithub, Evergreen Review, and Epiphany Magazine, and his first book, Realistic Fiction, has just been published with Littlepuss Press. He’s the co-host of the World Transsexual Forum, a discussion panel and open mic series for trans artists. His work has been described as, “Whimsical, yet heavy-handed. It’s just like reading the Constance Garnett translation of Dostoyevsky.” You can follow him on bluesky or instagram: @aaantons.

February 26

Holly Baxter is an executive editor and staff writer at the Independent in New York. She has experience in generating clicks on both sides of the Atlantic, having worked in the Independent’s London office as a reporter for three years before transferring to New York. She has also worked for publications including The Guardian, Buzzfeed and VICE. Her work was shortlisted for a Press Award for Feature of the Year in 2019 and she often appears on British radio and television. Baxter lives in Brooklyn, New York. CLICKBAIT (Harper Perennial) is her debut novel. 

Tracy O'Neill is the author of the memoir Woman of Interest. Her novels include The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015; and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020.  In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. In 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Believer, The Literarian, The Austin Chronicle, New World Writing, The Baffler, Narrative, 4Columns, Scoundrel Time, Guernica, Bookforum, Electric Literature, Grantland, Vice, The Guardian, VQR, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Catapult. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. She teaches at Vassar College.

Niv Sekar is a writer and artist. She grew up in the South and now resides in New York, watching the winters arrive later. She is grateful to have been supported by Tin House, Clarion, MacDowell, Kundiman, and the Center for Fiction. Her work has been published in Joyland Magazine and her comics live online and in zine libraries. Written or drawn, she tells stories about queer brown girls navigating strange and familiar worlds.

Tyler Wetherall is a journalist and author. Her debut novel Amphibian––a subversive coming-of-age story about girlhood, desire, and metamorphosis––was released in 2024. Her first book, No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run, followed her childhood spent on the run with her fugitive father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, British Vogue, The Guardian, LitHub, and National Geographic. Tyler has made appearances on podcasts including BBC Outlook, Good Life Project, and Radiotopia's Criminal. She is also the creator of Reading the City, a weekly newsletter of bookish events taking place around New York City. Raised in the UK, she now lives in Brooklyn, and by day, she's an editor for James Beard award-winning drinks magazine SevenFifty Daily.

JANUARY 22 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

MATEO ASKARIPOUR wants people to feel seen. His first novel, Black Buck, takes on racism in corporate America with humor and wit. It was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today show book club pick. Askaripour was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars poised to make waves” and was named as a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize. This Great Hemisphere is his second novel. He lives in Brooklyn. 

AMANDA MILLER is a Brooklyn-based writer and theater artist. Her nonfiction, fiction and poetry have appeared in The Rumpus, Thieving Magpie, Jewishfiction.net, Sylvia Magazine, Fearsome Critters, Hare’s Paw, Freerange Nonfiction,  Cratelit, Underwired Magazine, and other publications. She is the author of One Breath, Then Another: A Memoir, co-editor of Words After Dark: A Lyrics, Lit & Liquor Anthology, and host of performances series' Lyrics, Lit & Liquor and Supper in Fort Lauderdale. Amanda has toured her award-winning theater pieces to festivals through the U.S., Scotland and Canada. She is currently producing a play she co-wrote with her mother called Quacks & Whacks: A C(ancer) Comedy which will premiere at the NYC Fringe Festival in April 2025. Amanda holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BFA in Acting from NYU.

NICOLE TRESKA is the author of the debut memoir Wonderland: A Tale of Hustling Hard and Breaking Even (Simon & Schuster, 2024). The Wall Street Journal called Wonderland “gatsbyesque," and Treska "washed up on the shores of respectability.” Her work has recently appeared in The End, Forever Magazine, and Archway Editions. Her short fiction has appeared in New York Tyrant magazine, Epiphany literary journal, and Egress: New Openings in Literary Art. Her interviews and reviews are up at Electric Literature, Guernica, The Millions, BOMB, The Rumpus, and others.

IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He has earned an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College. He has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. 

Doors at 7:30pm. Reading at 8pm. Free with RSVP.

2024

DECEMBER 18 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Joan Larkin is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Old Stranger: Poems, as well as Blue Hanuman and My Body: New and Selected Poems. She has received the Audre Lorde Award, the Lambda Literary Award. She co-founded Out & Out Books during the 1970s feminist literary explosion, co-edited four anthologies, including Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, and has been a lifelong teacher. Larkin has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She received the 2011 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Photo Credit: Jessica Madavo

Nina St. Pierre is a queer essayist and culture writer whose work has appeared in Elle, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, The Cut, Gossamer, Outside Magazine, and more. She is a 2023 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Nonfiction Literature, holds an MFA from Rutgers, and lives in Brooklyn. Love is a Burning Thing, a memoir of family, fire, and what it means to believe, is her first book. 

Ledia Xhoga is an Albanian American fiction writer and playwright. Her debut novel, Misinterpretation (Tin House) is a Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a Debutiful Best Book of the Year. Before getting an MFA in fiction from Texas State University, she worked in publishing in New York City. She has been published in Intrepid Times, Hobart, KGB magazine, and other journals. Originally from Tirana, Albania, she lives with her family in Brooklyn and the Catskills. Photo Credit: Todd Estrin

Jenny Xie is the author of Holding Pattern (Riverhead Books), a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Her short fiction has appeared in The Sewanee Review, AGNI, Ninth Letter, and Joyland, among other publications. Her writing on design, travel, and culture has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Architectural Digest, Apartment Therapy, Them, and Dwell, where she was previously the Executive Editor. Jenny is the grateful recipient of fellowships from organizations like Bread Loaf, MacDowell, and Yaddo. Photo Credit: Cheryl Chan

Doors at 7:30

Reading at 8pm

Free with RSVP

November 20 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Jamie Kahn is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has been featured in Glamour, The Evergreen Review, Epiphany Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and others. She serves as the contributing features editor for Epiphany Magazine, and is the Programming and Development Manager for The Urbane Arts Club.

Say Madges is a writer-editor-bartender. They have an MFA in creative nonfiction from the New School and a lot of debt. They've published with The Rumpus, Guernica, and the Village Voice, among others, and most recently curated and edited the anthology, "On Work" through The Seventh Wave's fellowship program.

Alana Saab is a literary writer and screenwriter. She holds a master of fine arts in fiction from The New School, a master’s degree in psychology from Columbia University, and her bachelor’s from New York University in the phenomenology of storytelling. She lives in New York with her partner. Please Stop Trying to Leave Me is her first novel.

Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American painter and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl, named a "Best Book" by Apple, Electric Literature, and more. Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy at Princeton and Harvard, and painting at the Grand Central Atelier. A two-time Greenshields Foundation-award winner, TedX speaker, and resident artist, Song has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is at work on a second memoir, a meditation on grief, mental illness and the power of art making. Song lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Learn more about her at www.hyeseungsong.com or @hyeseungs. 

Doors at 7:30

Reading at 8pm

Free with RSVP

October 23 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Joanna Fuhrman is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Creative Writing at Rutgers University and the author of seven books of poetry, including To a New Era (Hanging Loose Press, 2021) and the forthcoming Data Mind (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2024). Fuhrman’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2023, The Pushcart Prize anthology, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and The Slowdown podcast. She first published with Hanging Loose Press as a teenager and became a co-editor in 2022.

Alice Kaltman is the author of two story collections and three novels. Most recently she’s published a graphic memoir entitled, Alice’s Big Book of Mistakes.  Her historical fiction novella, Mother and Daughter Sit for a Portrait, is forthcoming in 2025 from WTAW Press. Alice’s work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best Small Fiction, and the Pushcart Prize, and was a Wigleaf Top 50 in 2024. Alice splits her time between Brooklyn and Montauk, NY where she lives, surfs, and swims with her husband the sculptor Daniel Wiener and Ollie the Wonder Dog.

Georges Michelsen Foy is a Franco-American novelist and essayist. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction, and has won a Joe Gouveia Poetry award as well as prizes in Ep;phany Journal's, Cutthroat Journal's, Fiction Factory's and Forword 's fiction contests. Published novels: fourteen (Viking, Bantam, HarperCollins, University Press of New England etc.) The Last Green Light, featuring the working people of Gatsby's world, came out with Guernica Editions in May, 2024; his latest novel, The Winterpoor, comes out with Sea Crow Press in November, 2025. Non-fiction books; three (Scribner, Flatiron / Macmillan). Creative non-fiction: Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, New York Times etc. Short fiction: Notre Dame Review, Ep;phany Journal, Washington Square, MonkeyBicycle, etc.

Masae Satouchi is a multimedia artist and certified color therapy and image consultant and owns Salon de Chromachic in the East Village.

Masae was born with a special sensitivity to color and believes deeply in the power of color. Utilizing color therapy, she helps others achieve their dreams through creative self-expression. Her mission is igniting joy and liberation with the magic of colors. 

Doors at 7:30

Reading at 8pm

Free with RSVP

SEPTEMBER 25 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Colin Dickey is the author of five books of nonfiction, including Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and, most recently, Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. 

Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer born in Brasília, Brazil, now living in Chicago, IL. She's the author of the poetry collection Mother/land, winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Witness, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Craft: Stories I wrote for the Devil is her fiction debut.

Lena Valencia is the author of the short story collection Mystery Lights (Tin House Books, 2024). Her fiction has appeared in BOMB, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, Epiphany, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit. 

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is the author of Glassworks, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the forthcoming Mutual Interest. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Florida State University and lives in Brooklyn with her partner.

Doors at 7:30

Reading at 8pm

Free with RSVP

JUNE 26 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Brittney Inman Cooke received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Heavy Feather Review, Bookanista, and other places. She serves on the Board of Epiphany Magazine, and she's a co-founder of The Urbane Arts Club in Ditmas Park.

Danny Goodman's writing has appeared in various publications, and he was the recipient of a writer-in-residence fellowship from Rivendell. He earned his MFA in Fiction from the University of New Orleans, where he was a two-time winner of the Samuel Mockbee Award. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, a book editor, and their editorial cats. His debut novel, Amerikaland, will be released on June 4.  

Nina St. Pierre is a queer essayist and culture writer whose work has appeared in Elle, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, The Cut, Gossamer, Outside Magazine, and more. She is a 2023 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Nonfiction Literature, holds an MFA from Rutgers, and lives in Brooklyn. Love is a Burning Thing, a memoir of family, fire, and what it means to believe, is her first book. 

Wesley Straton is a California-born, Brooklyn-based writer and bartender. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, GQ, and The Common. Her debut novel, The Bartender’s Cure, was published in 2022 by Flatiron Books.

May 22 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Larissa Babij is a Ukrainian-American writer, translator, and dancer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2005. Her writing and translations have appeared in The Evergreen Review, Arrowsmith Journal, Krytyka, London Ukrainian Review, The Odessa Review, and other publications. She also teaches Awareness Through Movement classes in the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education. Her book A Kind of Refugee (ibidem Press) chronicles living in Ukraine at war and participating in the country’s civic–military defense. She continues to publish dispatches from wartime Ukraine on Substack (https://akindofrefugee2022.substack.com/).

Matthew Daddona is the author of the poetry collection House of Sound, which Publishers Weekly called "ruminative...a glimpse into a mind on the search for answers." A multi-hyphenate writer, his work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, Electric Literature, Whalebone, Tin House, Grammy.com, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He lives on the North Fork of Long Island, where, in addition to ghostwriting full time, he shucks oysters, installs irrigation systems, and volunteers as a firefighter. 

Kyle Carrero Lopez is the author of MUSCLE MEMORY, the chapbook winner of the 2020 [PANK] Books Contest. His poems are published or forthcoming in The Nation, POETRY, The Atlantic, Guernica, Jewish Currents, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where he was a Goldwater Fellow, and is the co-founder of LEGACY, a Brooklyn-based production collective founded by and for Black queer artists. 

Zito Madu is a Nigerian-born writer who grew up in Detroit, Michigan. A former narrative director at several creative agencies, sportswriter, soccer player, and engineering student, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has been published in many publications, including Plough Quarterly, Victory Journal, GQ Magazine, the New Republic, and the Nation.

APR. 24 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Our April reading will take place at the Urbane Arts Club, located at 1016 Beverley Rd., Brooklyn, 11218

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection Green Frog (out now from Vintage in the U.S. and June 6, 2024 from Picador in the U.K.). A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, and Gulf Coast, among others. Photo: S.M. Sukardi

Christina Cooke’s writing has previously appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, PRISM international, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, Journey Prize winner, and Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award winner, she holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City. Broughtupsy is her debut novel. 

Rachel Lyon is author of the novels Self-Portrait with Boy, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize, and Fruit of the Dead. Her short work has appeared in One Story, The Rumpus, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. Rachel has taught creative writing at various institutions, most recently Bennington College; she lives with her husband and two young children in Western Massachusetts. Photo: Pieter M. van Hattem

Jessie Ren Marshall’s debut story collection is WOMEN! IN! PERIL! (Bloomsbury, 2024). Her writing has appeared in places like New England Review, Electric Lit, ZYZZYVA, and the New York Times. She has an MFA from New York University and her work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Millay Arts, the KHN Center for the Arts, and the Community of Writers. She lives off-grid with her dogs on Hawai‘i Island. Find her at jessierenmarshall.com.

Doors at 7:15

Show at 8pm

Free with RSVP

MAR. 27 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-US American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels. In 2015 Bokförlaget ETC published her co-authored book Allt som är Mitt: Våldtäkt, Stigmatisering och Upprättelse (English translation: All that is mine: Rape, Stigmatization and Reparation). The book received a grant from the Swedish Arts Council. In September 2018 her novel Utelåst – Uppväxt- nostalgi för freaks (Locked Out – A nostalgic account of growing up for freaks) a parody of the coming-of-age genre, was published by Dockhaveri Förlag. She resides between Athens and Berlin and has no real hobbies, only intensity and serenity. Love the World or Get Killed Trying is her freshly published English language debut. Photo credit David Uzochukwu

Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary anti-Zionist Jewish writer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, City of Laughter, is out now on Grove Atlantic. Photo credit: Leah James

Patricia Grisafi, PhD, is a freelance writer. Her cultural criticism and personal essays have appeared in CNN, Los Angeles Review of Books, NBCThink, Salon, Vice, SELF, Narratively, Catapult, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is the author of Breaking Down Plath, a study of Sylvia Plath geared towards middle and high school students. Her first collection of poetry, ANIMAL, is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing. She lives in New York City with her husband, two children, and two rescue dogs.

Parul Kapur was born in Assam, India and grew up in Connecticut. Her debut novel, Inside the Mirror, about twin sister artists in 1950s India, won the AWP Prize for the Novel and is out now from the University of Nebraska Press. Her short stories, articles, and reviews have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal Europe, Art in America, Guernica, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Paris Review. She has received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Atlanta with her family. Photo credit: Vino Wong 

FEB. 28 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tania Pabón Acosta is a nonfiction writer based in Brooklyn. She holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has appeared in Pigeon Pages, Entropy, Medium, Catapult and The Rumpus, among others. Tania was chosen for AmpLit Fest’s Emerging Writer Showcase of 2018, and is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts 2024 fellow. By day, Tania works in higher education and bakes to procrastinate.

Elyssa Goodman is a writer and photographer specializing in arts and culture. Her work has been published in Vogue, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Vanity Fair, and others online and in print. Elyssa has also written about LGBTQ+ history and culture for Conde Nast’s them, where she was the site’s “Drag Herstory” and Queer Women's History columnist. She has been a freelance writer for 19 years and in love with drag for 28 years, since the age of seven.

Vida James is Puerto Rican by way of New York, a social worker by trade. She is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. Her writing has been supported by Periplus, Storyknife, Tin House, Bread Loaf, MASS MoCA, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and VONA. She has work appearing or forthcoming in Witness, Story, New England Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.

Rachel Rear is a writer, teacher, actor, and sometime aerialist living in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Sunlight Press, Crab Creek Review, Off The Coast Poetry Journal, and the academic journal Voices from the Middle.  Her first book, Catch the Sparrow, a true crime/memoir, was published in February 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing USA and Sphere Books UK. Follow her on Twitter @RaeRear.

JAN. 24 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. She is Publishing Director of the Chicago Review of Books and Associate Editor of A Public Space. Her latest novel is Alice Sadie Celine (Simon and Schuster, 2023).  

Emily Cementina's writing has appeared in Vol. 1 Broolyn, Black Lipstick, Juked, Thrush, and JMWW, among other publications. She is the Assistant Director of ACES (Academic Center for English Language Studies) at St. Joseph's University, Brooklyn. Find her on Instagram @emilycem. 

Wah-Ming Chang has received grants for fiction from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and twice from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has attended or will attend writing residencies at Yaddo, Dickinson House, Saltonstall, and Ucross. Her work has appeared in Joyland, The Literary Review, and Brooklyn Rail. Hand, Held, her artist book about her father’s art and art practice, will be published by Bored Wolves in 2024.

Stephon Lawrence is a writer, and artist from Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of the MFA in Writing at Pratt Institute, and is interested in otherworldly poetics and the creation and cultivation of emancipatory poetic spaces for felt sentiments that have been marginalized, displaced, or estranged from the dominant culture. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Horseless Press, Queen Mob's Teahouse, GlitterMOB, Fanzine & other places. Her microchap, //GERMZ, is available from Ghost City Press. And her chapbook, //EVIL TWIN, is available from Resolving Host. Stephon is a recipient of a Summer Workshop Scholarship at the Fine Arts Work Center and a finalist for The Poetry Project's "Emerge-Surface-Be" Fellowship. u know how much i hate being alone in social situations//  (Futurepoem, 2023) is her first full-length collection of poetry. Photo credit: Bob Krasner

2023

DEC. 20 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Mike Albo's most recent novel, Another Dimension of Us, was published by Penguin Random House in 2023. His other work includes the novels Hornito (HarperCollins) and The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, written with Virginia Heffernan (Bloomsbury USA). He also wrote the novella The Junket, and memoir Spermhood: Diary of a Donor (both Amazon Kindle Singles). Albo has written for the New York Times, the NewYorker, New York Magazine, Lambda Legal, TED. com, Out, AARP and many other magazines and websites. mikealbo.net

Nat Mesnard is a writer and game designer based in NYC, where they teach Narrative Design, Game Design, and Game Studies at Pratt Institute. Nat has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Brink, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Cartridge Lit, Autostraddle, Bodega, Blackbird, Kenyon Review Online, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. A 2023 recipient of the Paragraph Jane Hoppen Residency, Nat is faculty in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and teaches classes in interactive fiction for One Story.

Sarah Wang’s stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's Bazaar; n+1, BOMB, and McSweeney's. A recipient of fellowships from PEN America, MacDowell, NYSCA/NYFA, and the Center for Fiction, she is a Tin House Scholar, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar, and the winner of a Nelson Algren prize for fiction. She has received support from Edith Wharton/Straw Dog Writers Guild, Monson Arts, Wildacres, and Café Royal Cultural Foundation. She teaches creative writing at Barnard College.

Abigail Welhouse is the author of Small Dog (dancing girl press), Bad Baby (dancing girl press), Too Many Humans of New York (Bottlecap Press), and Memento Mori (a poem/comic collaboration with Evan Johnston). Her poems have been published in The Toast, the Heavy Feather Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and elsewhere. Subscribe to her Secret Poems at tinyletter.com/welhouse. 

NOV. 29 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Anthony Cappo is the author of When You’re Deep in a Thing (Four Way Books 2022) and the chapbook, My Bedside Radio. His poems and other writings have appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Prelude, The Rumpus, The Boiler, and other publications. Anthony received his M.F.A. in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and now lives in New York City. His work can be found at anthonycappo.com. 

Omotara James is a writer, editor and visual artist. She is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a recipient of the 2019 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She earned her BA from Hofstra University and received her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. She is a fellow of Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants and currently lives in New York City. Her debut collection, Song of My Softening, is forthcoming from Alice James Books.

Monique Laban's fiction and essays have appeared in The Offing, Catapult, The Florida Review, Clarkesworld, and elsewhere. She has received support from Hedgebrook, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Viable Paradise Workshop, and VONA. She is a 2023-2024 Susan Kamil Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow. She lives in the Upper East Side and is currently at work on a novel. 

Diane Mehta was born in Frankfurt, grew up in Bombay and New Jersey, studied in Boston, and now makes her home in New York City. Her second poetry collection Tiny Extravaganzas is out with Arrowsmith Press in 2023. Her essay collection Happier Far comes out in 2024. New and recent work is in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and A Public Space. Her writing has been recognized by the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and fellowships at Civitella Ranieri and Yaddo. She was an editor at A Public Space, PEN America, and Guernica. Her latest project is a poetry cycle connected to The Divine Comedy. She is also collaborating with musicians to invent a new way of working through sound together.

OCT. 25 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Jennifer Baker is a publishing professional of 20 years, the creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, and a faculty member of the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at Bay Path University and a writing consultant at Baruch College. Formerly a contributing editor to Electric Literature, she received a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship and a Queens Council on the Arts New Work Grant for Nonfiction Literature. Her essay "What We Aren't (or the Ongoing Divide)" was listed as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2018. In 2019, she was named Publishers Weekly Superstar for her contributions to inclusion and representation in publishing. Jennifer is also the editor of the all PoC-short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018) and the author of the YA novel Forgive Me Not (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023). She has volunteered with organizations such as We Need Diverse Books and I, Too Arts Collective, and spoken widely on topics of inclusion, the craft of writing/editing, podcasting, and the inner workings of the publishing industry. Her fiction, nonfiction, and criticism has appeared in various print and online publications. Her website is: jennifernbaker.com Photo: Gaby Deimeke

Originally from the Hudson Valley in New York, Thea Brown is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently Loner Forensics (Northwestern University Press), which came out in May of this year. Poems can be found in Oversound, Denver Quarterly, Pinwheel, the Iowa Review, LitHub, Vinyl, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at the George Washington University.

Madison Jamar is a writer from Columbus, Ohio currently living and working in New York City. Her essays have appeared in Catapult, 68to05, Black Lipstick, The Common and more.

Uzodinma Okehi: A shadowy flight into the incomprehensible, sub-literary world of a dude, who does not exist 

Sept. 27 • 8PM • Hinterlands

Our September reading is guest-curated by The Keepthings. The Keepthings memoir project publishes micro-essays about loved ones who’ve died, inspired by the physical objects they left behind; the essays are collected on Instagram and Substack. The Keepthings has been featured on HuffPost, KatieCouric.com and LitHub. This event will feature Keepthings contributors sharing their stories and the objects that inspired them for an evening of collective remembrance. 

Rachel Cline is the author of the novels What to Keep, My Liar, and The Question Authority and has published essays in the New York Times Magazine, Tin House, Lit Hub, McSweeney’s, and many smaller publications. She has been a fellow at Sewanee, a resident at Yaddo, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. A Brooklyn native, Cline has lived in Kings County for most of her life. Photo by Nina Subin.

Matthew Lansburgh's collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in One Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review and Alaska Quarterly Review and has been shortlisted in Best American Short Stories. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo and MacDowell. www.matthewlansburgh.com

Tara Lindis has published work in the Kenyon Review, The Fourth River, Construction Literary Magazine, PitHead Chapel, and in Best Micro Fiction 2021. Originally from Portland, Oregon, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Anja Wood is principal cellist for Hamilton on Broadway, whose soundtrack has sold more than 10 million copies. A versatile musician, she has recorded or performed with David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Dave Matthews, Barbara Streisand, Harry Connick, Jr., Pearl Jam, Trey Anastasio, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and others. Anja lives in New York with her two daughters and is also the founder and president of The Lelt Foundation, a nonprofit that provides assistance to acutely malnourished children in Ethiopia. https://www.xquartet.com/

Claudia Zuluaga’s first novel, Fort Starlight (Engine Books, 2013), was described by The New York Times as an “entertaining debut,” and “a moving story of half-recovered dreams” that is “beautifully executed.” Publishers Weekly called it an “absorbing, expertly written debut.” Fort Starlight was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize. Claudia lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with her husband and two children. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is on the writing faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her short fiction has been featured in Narrative Magazine, Lost, JMWW, Jellyfish Review, and others. Photo by Julia Maloof Verderosa.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2023 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT

JuLY 26 • Hinterlands

Rebecca Bengal is the author of the new collection Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists (Aperture) and a new short story, "Blood Harmony," in Kristine Potter: Dark Waters (also Aperture). Her fiction, essays, and other nonfiction have been published by the Paris Review, the New York Times, Southwest Review, Oxford American, Bookforum, Criterion Collection, and Vogue, among others. Originally from western North Carolina, she received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and lives in Brooklyn. Photo by Matthew Lefheit.

Marissa Castrigno is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Barren, PANK Daily, Kissing Dynamite, and others; she was a 2021 Humor Finalist for the Missouri Review's Miller Audio Prize. She's currently Associate Editor Shenandoah and Nonfiction Editor at The Adroit Journal, and has previously worked with Oxford American and Ecotone. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at UNC Wilmington, and holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University.

Christopher Hermelin is the mixologist and host of the podcast So Many Damn Books, has typewritten thousands of personalized short stories for strangers under the moniker The Roving Typist, and once had an inspirational quote printed on the side of a Starbucks cup. He’s still paying off the MFA he got in Fiction from the New School, and lives in Brooklyn.

LaToya Jordan is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her novella, To the Woman in the Pink Hat, was published in March by Aqueduct Press. Her short fiction, poetry, and journalism have appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, MER, Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more. Her flash story “Offering” was featured in Best Small Fictions 2021 and named Wigleaf’s Top 50. Her essay “The Zig Zag Mother,” appears in My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After and another essay, “After Striking a Fixed Object,” published by The Manifest-Station, was notable in Best American Essays 2016. She is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar, and is currently working on a speculative short story collection about Black girls and women being mothered, mothering, or wanting to mother. She has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram @latoyajordanwriter.

June 28 • Hinterlands

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, published in March 2023 in the US and UK from Melville House. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature. He received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Fiction from The Southern Review and a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology. He received an MFA from Columbia University and is an editorial assistant at One Story. 

Timothy Ree is the son of Korean immigrants. He teaches literature and writing at a public high school in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University. His poems have appeared in Tribes, Great Weather for Media, and The Cortland Review. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cave Canem, Poets House, and the Academy for Teachers. He is a recipient of the Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize from the Bread Loaf School of English. His debut collection of poetry, Beasting, was published last fall.

Kyle Francis Williams is a writer living in Brooklyn. He is an Interviews Editor for Full Stop and a recent MFA graduate of the Michener Center. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Southern Humanities Review, and Epiphany, Southampton Review and Joyland. He is unfortunately on Twitter and Instagram @kylefwill.

Anne-E. Wood’s fiction has appeared in TLR, No Tokens, Gargoyle, Agni, The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Cream City Review, Tin House, Fourteen Hills and others. She teaches in the Writing Program at Rutgers Newark. 

may 24 • Hinterlands

Blair Hurley is the author of The Devoted, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her second novel, Minor Prophets was published in April 2023. Her work is published in New England Review, Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and an ASME Fiction award finalist.

Lara Longo is the Director of Strategy and Growth at The Atlantic and has an MA in Cultural Studies from King's College London. Her writing has been published in Guernica, The Offing, The Baltimore Review, jmww, Peach Mag, and more. Lara is currently wrapping work on a short story manuscript. She lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn with husband, Aaron, and daughter, Martha.

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers, and the Publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ontario. Photo: Hobbes Ginsberg

Laura Spence-Ash’s debut novel, Beyond That, the Sea, was published by Celadon Books on March 21, 2023. The novel received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was named a GMA Buzz Pick, and is an Indie Next pick for April 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her critical essays and book reviews appear regularly in the Ploughshares blog. She received her MFA in fiction from Rutgers–Newark, and she lives in New Jersey. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

APRIL 26 • Hinterlands

UPDATE: Jinwoo Chong will no longer be reading with us this month, but we hope to reschedule him for a forthcoming date very soon! Caroline Hagood will be joining us in his place.

Paula Bomer is the author of two novels, Tante Eva and Nine Months, the story collections Baby and Other Stories and Inside Madeleine, and an essay collection, Mystery and Mortality. Her work appears regularly in Full Stop, and can be found in Bomb, LA Review of Books, The Cut and elsewhere. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana and has lived in Brooklyn for over 30 years.

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Feb-2023). His short fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Conjunctions, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize.

Caroline Hagood is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Writing and Publishing and Director of Undergraduate Writing at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, where she also teaches in the creative writing MFA program. She is the author of two poetry books, the novel, Ghosts of America, and the book-length essays, Ways of Looking at a Woman and Weird Girls: Writing the Art Monster. Her novel Filthy Creation is forthcoming in May 2023. Her work has appeared in publications including Electric Literature, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, the Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and Elle.

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of twelve novels including The Ancestor and The Mentor along with his five-book Desire Card series. His YA seriesRunaway Train is currently in script development with actress Raegan Revord from TV’s Young Sheldon off his original written pilot. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared as a contributor in CrimeReads, Pipeline Artists, LitHub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Mystery Tribune, The Big Idea, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, Hypertext, If My Book, Past Ten, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Maudlin House and others. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com

MARCH 22 • HINTERLANDS

Elina Alter's translation of It's the End of the World, My Love was published last month, and another story collection by Alla Gorbunova is forthcoming, also from Deep Vellum. Her translation of Oksana Vasyakina's novel Wound will be out in September. 

Thierry Kehou is the translator of A Sun to be Sewn by Jean D'Amérique (Other Press, 2023). His work has appeared in Departures Magazine, Lampblack, The Huron River Review, and elsewhere. He is recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference and the Fulbright Program, and his translation of Francis Bebey’s Three Little Shoeshiners was longlisted for the 2020 John Dryden Translation Competition. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. A native of New Rochelle, NY, he lives in New York City where he is a founding member of the Lampblack Literary Foundation.

Mel King is a trans and queer writer. Born in Albany, NY, he has been based in Brooklyn since 2006. His work has appeared in Catapult, Cortland Review, and North American Review, among others. He received his MFA in Fiction from Rutgers-Newark and has been awarded fellowships from the Truman Capote Foundation, Lambda Literary Foundation, and the Yiddish Book Center. He is currently seeking representation for a memoir. www.melkingwrites.com

Brendan Lorber is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of If this is paradise why are we still driving?(subpress, 2018) and several chapbooks, most recently Unfixed Elegy and Other Poems. His visual art is in The Museum of Modern Art, The Free Black Women’s Library, Artists Space NYC, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodland Pattern Center, The Scottish Poetry Library, and in private collections. He teaches fantasy cartography and lives in a little observatory in a Brooklyn neighborhood that nobody can quite find on a map. 

FEBRUARY 22 • HINTERLANDS

Libby Flores’ writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Gagosian Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Mc Sweeney’s, Tin House /The Open Bar, The Guardian, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the Associate Publisher at  BOMB Magazine. Libby was a 2008 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and she holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.  She lives in Brooklyn, but will always be a Texan.

Isle McElroy’s debut novel, The Atmospherians, was named a NY Times Editors' Choice. Their second novel, People Collide, is forthcoming in 2023. Other writing appears in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Cut, Vulture, GQ, Vogue, The Atlantic, Tin House, and elsewhere. They live in Brooklyn. Photo credit: Jih-E Peng 

Alice Robb has written for Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, among other publications. Her first book, Why We Dream was recommended by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Today, Vogue, TIME and The Guardian, and was translated into many foreign languages. Her second book, Don't Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet (Feb 28, 2023) has been called "an elegantly incisive, meditative work" (Kirkus) and "A rigorous yet loving examination of a childhood passion told through a feminist lens" (Rebecca Traister).

Thomas Mar Wee is a writer, editor, and poet living in Brooklyn. Their poetry was previously awarded a University & College poetry prize from the Academy of American Poets. A recent graduate of Columbia University, they currently serve as an assistant at a literary agency and are working on a novel.

2022

December 21 • HINTERLANDS

Sarah Bridgins' poetry collection DEATH AND EXES is the winner of the Sexton Poetry Prize and was published by Eyewear Books in the fall of 2022. Her work has appeared in Tin House, BuzzFeed, Bustle, Joyland, Entropy, Fanzine, and Big Lucks among other journals. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the co-founder of the Ditmas Lit reading series in Brooklyn. 

Chloe Caldwell is the author of three books: the essay collection I’ll Tell You in Person, the critically acclaimed novella,  and Legs Get Led Astray. Her memoir, The Red Zone: A Love Story released this past April. Chloe’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, New York Magazine’s The Cut, The Strategist, Buzzfeed, Longreads, Vice, Nylon, Salon.com, Medium, The Rumpus, Catapult, Hobart, The Sun, and half a dozen anthologies including Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NYC. Her essay “Hungry Ghost” was listed as Notable in 2017 Best American Non Required Reading. She teaches creative writing online, offers mentorships, and hosts seasonal writing workshops and retreats. She lives in Hudson, N.Y. with her family.

Catherine LaSota is a writer, creativity coach, and community builder. She is founder of the Resort writing community and host of the Cabana Chats podcast on writing & community, as well as founder of the LIC Reading Series (2015-2020). She lives with her husband and two young children in Queens, NYC, and you can find her writing in Catapult, Vice, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. Follow her adventures @catherinelasota and @TheResortLIC.

Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collections Doll Palace, re-released by 713 Books, and Jerks from Mason Jar Press. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has appeared in The Lit Hub, The Washington Post, Catapult, Guernica and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Ditmas Park. LECH is her debut novel. 

NOVEMBER 30 • HINTERLANDS

Cat Fitzpatrick is the Editrix at LittlePuss Press, the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University—Newark, and a noted society hostess, for a given definition of “society” and “hostess”. She tweets @intermittentcat and maintains a website at catfitzpatrick.net. Her first novel, The Call-Out, is out in November 2022 from Seven Stories Press.

Originally from Argentina, Cecilia Gentili came to the USA pursuing a safer life as a transgender woman. She lived undocumented for 10 years, hustling doing sex work. After surviving arrests and an immigration detention, she subsequently served as Director of Policy at GMHC and founded Transgender Equity Consulting. A storyteller and actress, Cecilia has appeared in FX's Pose and her own one-woman show. Faltas is her first book.

Miracle Jones is from Texas. He is a very private person.

Alice Kaltman is the author of the story collection Staggerwing, the novels Wavehouse, The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh, and Dawg Towne. Her linked story collection, Almost Deadly, Almost Good is out November 22, 2022 from word west press. Alice’s work appears in journals like Lost Balloon, The Pinch, Joyland, Hobart and BULL, and in numerous anthologies. She’s not thrilled by the sound of her own voice, but you might like it. If so, you can hear her read her work at Micro Podcasts, Elevator Stories, and No Contact. Alice splits her time between Brooklyn and Montauk, NY where she lives, surfs, and swims with her husband the sculptor Daniel Wiener and Ollie the Wonder Dog.

October 26 • HINTERLANDS

Syreeta McFadden is a writer and professor of English at the City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her work has been featured in the poetry anthology, BreakBeat Poets 2: Black Girl Magic from Haymarket Books and the anthology Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From The MeToo Movement from McSweeney’s Press. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed News, and elsewhere. She is a nonfiction editor for Guernica and is writing a book-length collection of reported essays about African Americans in the Middle West.

Carley Moore is the author of Panpocalypse, The Not Wives, 16 Pills, and The Stalker Chronicles. She’s a Clinical Professor of Writing and Creative Production at New York University and she lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram @fragmentedsky

Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020. She was named a 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and in 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. Her writing has appeared widely in publications including Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. She teaches at Vassar College.

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Catapult, and many other publications. Amy lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

SEPTEMBER 28 •HINTERLANDS

Miracle Jones is from Texas. He is a very private person.

Kwame Opoku-Duku is the author of The Unbnd Verses. His poetry and fiction appear in The Atlantic, The Nation, POETRY, The Virginia Quarterly Review, BOMB, and other publications. He lives in Harlem, New York City, where he is an educator.

Rachel Sherman holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Fence, Conjunctions, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her first book, The First Hurt (Open City Books, 2006), was short-listed for The Story Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and was named one of the 25 Books to Remember in 2006 by the New York Public Library. Her novel, Living Room (Open City Books, 2009) was commended for its "perfect pacing” by The New York Times Book Review. She teaches writing at Columbia University, and leads the Ditmas Writing Workshops.

Nicole Zhu is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Eater, Electric Literature, Jellyfish Review, The Lumiere Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Aspen Words.

AUGUST 24 •HINTERLANDS

Eloisa Amezcua is from Arizona. Her second collection of poems, Fighting Is Like a Wife, was published by Coffee House Press (April 2022). Amezcua's debut collection, From the Inside Quietly, is the inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón. A MacDowell fellow, her poems and translations are published in New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others.  

Simona Blat is a Russian American writer from Brooklyn. She is the poetry editor at Epiphany magazine, and owner of Black Spring Books, a real life bookshop & literary social club. Somehow she also teaches writing at NYU and in whatever time is left, when she’s not reading or taking care of her blind dog, she tries to write. 

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and literary translator based in Brooklyn. She's a Contributor to New York Times Magazine, and her first book, The Other Island, won a Whiting Nonfiction Award and is forthcoming from Riverhead.

Emily Zhou’s book of short stories is forthcoming from LittlePuss Press, and her writing has appeared in e-flux journal and a few other places. She was born in Michigan and lives in New York.

june 22 •HINTERLANDS

Rachel Cantor is the author of two novels: A Highly Unlikely Scenario (Melville House 2014) and Good on Paper (Melville House 2016). More than two dozen of her stories have been published in venues such as the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. They have also been anthologized five times, nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and short-listed by Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, and Best of the Workshops. She has written essays about fiction for National Public Radio, the Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and other publications, and has received fellowships to numerous residencies both in the U.S. and abroad. She lives one block away in Brooklyn, New York.

Megan Cummins is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA), UC Davis (MA), and Rutgers-Newark (MFA); and her work has appeared in A Public Space, Guernica, One Teen Story, Ninth Letter, Okey-Panky, and elsewhere.

Her debut story collection IF THE BODY ALLOWS IT (Nebraska) was awarded the 2019 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.

She is the managing editor of A Public Space and serves on the governing board of the Bare Life Review. Her next project is a YA novel called Aerosol.

Jake Matkov is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (Poetry, 2017) and Queer/Art/Mentorship (Literature, 2015). Recent publications include glitterMOB, Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, and Peach Mag, which nominated his poem "Battery Fright" for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. He lives Brooklyn with his two cats, Milo and Rhoda, and works in the Diversity and Inclusion office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Yoojin Na is a physician, a writer, and MFA student at Columbia. Her works have been published in The New York Times, the Guardian, Joyland, and others.

Jake Matkov photo by Felicita "Felli" Maynard for the 2020 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project.

may 25 • Hinterlands

Vanessa Chan is the Malaysian author of a debut novel and story collection, both forthcoming from Scribner. Her novel will be published in sixteen languages worldwide. Vanessa’s other work has been published in Electric Lit, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, and more. She has received scholarship support from the Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and Tin House writers’ conferences, and co-curates the 20+ year old Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn.

Andres Cordoba is a Massachusetts-born writer. He has received honors such as the Thayer Fellowship For the Arts and the Patricia Kerr Ross Award, was named a 2019 Breakout 8 Writer in poetry by Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and was a finalist in Black Warrior Review's 2020 Poetry Contest. He is currently a Brooklyn Poets Mentorship fellow. His work can be found in As It Ought To Be, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and The Gandy Dancer. His mother refers to him as the Michael Jordan of mutual losses. More can be found on twitter (@urgoodpalandres) and instagram (@urgoodpal_andres).

Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. He is a writer, editor, and graphic designer living in Brooklyn.

Megan Milks is the author of Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body, finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award, and Slug, a revised edition of their award-winning first collection Kill Marguerite and Other Stories. Their personal history of early online fandom, Tori Amos Bootleg Webring, is now out as part of Instar Books' Remember the Internet series. They are co-editor of the anthology We Are the Baby-Sitters Club and teach writing and gender studies in New York.

April 27 • Hinterlands

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb is the author of Basic Needs (Rescue Press, 2021) and Images for Radical Politics (Rescue Press, 2016). She received her MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and is from and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Chris Leslie-Hynan’s debut novel, Ride Around Shining, was published by Harper and nominated for the 2015 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. As of this March, it is being developed by Netflix into a feature film starring LaKeith Stanfield and Jonah Hill. His short fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, ZYZZYVA, Harvard Review and the anthology New Stories from the Midwest, and his latest story is forthcoming in Evergreen Review. He grew up in Wisconsin and attended Carleton College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the prose editor at Epiphany, and lives down the street in Prospect Park South.

Corey Sobel's debut novel, The Redshirt, was short-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, awarded the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for LGBT+ Fiction, and named one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2020. His short fiction has been awarded the Prose Prize by The Columbia Review, and other writing has appeared in Esquire, Defector, Literary Hub, Largehearted Boy, and Epiphany.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, The Black Emerald, and The Dream of Doctor Bantam, all finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. She is the coeditor, with Tara Madison Avery, of We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology, and is the copublisher of Instar Books. Her work has appeared in n+1, Harper's Bazaar, The Evergreen Review, WIRED, and more. She lives in Brooklyn and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.

2020

February 19 • Hinterlands

Solange Azor is a Brooklyn based comedian and writer. You can find her performing around the city or supporting births as a full spectrum doula.

Pune Dracker is a 2020 MFA candidate studying Nonfiction/Poetry at The New School. She has spent many years writing and editing for the animal welfare world, and is a long-distance runner, jazz funk dancer and exceptionally messy vegan baker. Her recent work has appeared in SLICE, Hyperallergic and Barrow Street’s 4X2 Project.

Nancy Hightower has had work published in Joyland, Volume 1 Brooklyn, decomP, Heavy Feather Review, and Drunk Monkeys, among others. Her first collection of poetry, The Acolyte, was published in 2015 by Port Yonder Press. In April 2018, she was granted a micro-residency at the Strand Bookstore by The Poetry Society of New York as part of their joint Poet-A-Day Project. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the evangelical South.

Mickie Meinhardt is a Brooklyn-based writer and literary event host. She is the Events Director for Guernica magazine, the co-founder of New York writer's variety show Same Page, and the founder of the literary wine project The Buzzed Word, now a live series in New York and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in Guernica, The Bitter Southerner, Eater, and The Seventh Wave, among others, and she holds an MFA from The New School where she was a Creative Writing Fellow. You can find her most places on the Internet @mickiemyheart and her wine writing @thebuzzedword.

January 15 • hinterlands

Suzanne Dottino is a writer of fiction and plays. She is an adjunct professor of literature at BMCC. She is the Editor of KGB Bar Lit Journal. Her story "Angel of Mercy" in the current issue of The Bellevue Literary Review, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Visit her at www.suzannedottino.com.

Ben Fama is a writer based in New York City. He is the author of Deathwish (Newest York, 2019), Fantasy (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), and the chapbooksOdalisque (Bloof, 2014), Cool Memories (Spork, 2013), New Waves (Minutes Books, 2011), and Aquarius Rising (Ugly Duckling Presse 2010). He is also the author of the artist book Mall Witch (Wonder, 2012). He is the cofounder of Wonder.

Ryan D. Matthews is a writer and editor from rural Washington State and earned an MFA from the New School. A Hawthornden Castle Fellow, his work has also been recognized with fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, the Jentel Foundation, and others. He was recently nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and was a finalist for the 2019 Emerging Artists Program from the Jerome Foundation. His work has appeared in Joyland, and is forthcoming from Lit Hub and the British journal Litro.

Bishakh Som’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, We're Still Here (The first all-trans comics anthology), The Other Side: An Anthology of Queer Paranormal Romance Comics, Beyond, vol. 2 (The Queer Post-Apocalyptic & Urban Fantasy Comics Anthology), The Strumpet, The Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, VICE, The Brooklyn Rail, Buzzfeed, Ink Brick, The Huffington Post, The Graphic Canon vol. 3 and Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream. She received the Xeric grant in 2003 for her comics collection Angel. Her new collection of comics, Apsara Engine, is being published by The Feminist Press in Spring 2020 and her graphic memoir Spellbound will come out from Street Noise Books in August 2020. You can see more of her work at www.bishakh.com.  

december 18 • hinterlands

Zefyr Lisowski is a writer, artist, and sea queen currently based in Brooklyn. She's a staffer at Apogee Journal, an MFA candidate in Poetry at Hunter College, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the VIDA Review, Brooklyn Poets, and Sea Foam Mag, among other places. Her moon's in Gemini.

Michaela Morton is a performer, writer, and real estate agent. She's also a regular reader at Liars' League; the award-winning book writer/lyricist of Big Shoes, a musical for young audiences; and the voice of four titles from multilingual children's book publisher Madeleine Editions. A Connecticut Italian grown in North Carolina, Michaela now lives in Harlem, where she's presently at work on a book of essays. Visit her at www.michaelamorton.com.

Rena J. Mosteirin is the co-author of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) an academic and poetic exploration of the Apollo 11 guidance computer code. Her novella Nick Trail’s Thumb (Kore Press, 2008) won the Kore Press Short Fiction Award, judged by Lydia Davis. Her chapbook Half-Fabulous Whales (Little Dipper, 2019) explores Moby-Dick through erasure poetry. She is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine, holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.

Marco Rafalà is a first-generation Sicilian American novelist, musician, and writer for award-winning tabletop role-playing games. He earned his MFA in Fiction from The New School and is a cocurator of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series in New York City. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review and LitHub. How Fires End is his debut novel.

november 20 • Hinterlands

Mary Boo Anderson is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. Her art has been exhibited at Islip Art Museum, Kimberly-Klark Gallery, The Knockdown Center, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Goggleworks and elsewhere. Her poetry has been published in Peach Mag, Hobart, Metatron and Witch Craft Magazine among others. She is an editor of GlitterMOB, an art and literary magazine. www.whoismaryanderson.com

Carrie Conners, originally from West Virginia, lives in Queens, NY and teaches English at LaGuardia CC-CUNY. Her book Luscious Struggle was published by BrickHouse Books in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Chautauqua, Kestrel, Bodega, RHINO, and The Monarch Review, among other publications. She is also a poetry reader for Epiphany. twitter: @ConnersCarrie.

Louise Hung is a west coast lady living in Ditmas Park by way of Hong Kong, Japan, and a whole bunch of other places. She is the writer and producer for "Ask a Mortician", a YouTube series hosted by Order of the Good Death founder, Caitlin Doughty. Louise is also a writer and researcher for The Order of the Good Death, and host of the podcast "Death in the Afternoon". You may remember Louise from such varied publications as xoJane, Catster, Time, and HuffPost among others.

Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of the novels Fra Keeler and Call Me Zebra, and an Assistant Professor in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame. She is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree, and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, as well as residency fellowships from MacDowell and Ledig House. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Guernica, Granta, BOMB, and elsewhere. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.

October 16 • Hinterlands

Brian Birnbaum grew up thirty minutes west of Camden Yards in Baltimore, where at four years old he cried because the Yankees were losing. An MFA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, his work has been published or is forthcoming in The Smart Set, The Collagist, Atticus Review, SLAM Magazine, Lit Hub, Political Animal, and more. A finalist of Bayou Magazine's Knudsen Fiction Contest and scholarship winner for The Work Conference, his first novel, Emerald City, is forthcoming from Dead Rabbits in September 2019. Brian is a child of Deaf adults (CODA) and works in development for the family sign language interpreting business. He lives in Harlem with the writer M.K. Rainey and their dog.

Greg Gerke’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, The Kenyon Review Online, Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Mississippi Review, LIT, Film Quarterly, and others. Splice will publish two of his books in the autumn of 2019: See What I See, a book of essays out on 10/31, and Especially the Bad Things, a book of stories, available now. Greg lives in Brooklyn.

Amy Meng’s debut collection, Bridled, was selected by Jaswinder Bolina as the winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in publications including: Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, New England Review, Narrative Magazine, and The Offing. She is a Kundiman Fellow and poetry editor at Bodega Magazine. Amy holds degrees from Rutgers University and New York University, and is a Kundiman Fellow. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Briana Silberberg is a poet and prose writer from Queens. She hasn't published anything because transcription is a bitch and she gets too jumpy in front of her laptop. To soothe her startled nerves she likes to write more poems and goofy stories sometimes. Her work can regularly be heard at the Genre Reassignment and Gender Experts open mics for trans artists in Brooklyn.

September 18 • hinterlands

James Anderson is a 40-year-old incarcerated writer who has been imprisoned since the age of 17 for a crime he desperately wishes he could take back. Since entering prison, he has earned three college degrees, coordinated a youth outreach panel, and has served as an elected official in several leadership positions. He is currently studying for a bachelor's degree, and preparing for an upcoming parole hearing. His work will be read by Ditmas Lit alumnus Miracle Jones.

Note: James Anderson’s participation in Ditmas Lit is coordinated through the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program’s BREAK OUT Movement, which aims to (re)integrate incarcerated writers into literary community. Throughout the month of September 2019, in commemoration of the Attica Riots, PEN America, The Poetry Project, and over two dozen local reading series in New York City and across the country, are collaborating to feature the work of currently incarcerated writers. Because James is unable to experience this room, PEN America is making it possible to share feedback with him. If you are at this reading, please open your mobile browser and enter https://bit.ly/ditmasbreakout. Take a few moments to share thoughts and impressions with James. You can choose to share anonymously or not. If you include an address, you will be welcoming him to correspond with you.

Tyler Barton is a cofounder of Fear No Lit, home of the Submerging Writer Fellowship. His chapbook of flash fiction, The Quiet Part Loud, won the Turnbuckle Chapbook Prize and was published this year by Split Lip Press. Find his short stories soon in the Iowa Review, Cincinnati Review, and Necessary Fiction. Find him @goftyler or at tsbarton.com.

Melissa Grunow is the author of I DON'T BELONG HERE: ESSAYS (New Meridian Arts Press, 2018) and REALIZING RIVER CITY: A MEMOIR (Tumbleweed Books, 2016) which won the 2018 Book Excellence Award in Memoir, the 2017 Silver Medal in Nonfiction-Memoir from Readers' Favorite International Book Contest, and Second Place-Nonfiction in the 2016 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Nervous Breakdown, Two Hawks Quarterly, New Plains Review, and Blue Lyra Review, among many others. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and listed in the Best American Essays notables 2016 and 2018. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction with distinction from National University. Visit her website at http://www.melissagrunow.com.

Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a B.A. from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing for several years, she became a staff writer at The Economist. She currently serves on the board of The Moth. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

Kelly Tsai is an award-winning artist, writer, filmmaker, and musical artist/producer based in Brooklyn. Her memoir-in-progress, The Invisible Word, won the 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Non-Fiction Literature and has been nominated for the 2019 New York Community Trust Ellen Levine Prize. Her work as a spoken word poet has been featured at over 700 venues worldwide including the White House under Obama, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, and multiple times on HBO. She is an alum of the Kundiman, Hedgebrook, Callaloo, Cave Canem, and VONA writing workshops and residencies. Her work has been profiled by Forbes, NPR, and other outlets. Her award-winning short films have screened in the US and abroad, and her interdiscipinary performances have been presented in the US and abroad including Brooklyn Museum and the Taipei Poetry Festival. @kellytsai_nyc, kellytsai.com

August 14 • Hinterlands

Simon Jacobs is the author of the novel Palaces (Two Dollar Radio), and of Saturn (Spork Press), a collection of David Bowie stories. He is from Dayton, Ohio, and lives in New York City!

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection 'The People's Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling' (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Catapult, Autostraddle, and Barrelhouse.

Meher Manda is a poet, short story writer, journalist, and educator from Mumbai, India, currently based in New York City. She earned her MFA in Fiction from the College of New Rochelle, where she founded the literary journal, The Canopy Review. She is one-half of An Angry Reading Series, and her debut chapbook of poems titled Busted Models is forthcoming from No, Dear Magazine in September, 2019.

Audrey Olivero is a writer and editor from the South Bronx. Her work has appeared in Longreads.

July 17 • Hinterlands

Talia Bloch is the author of Inheritance, a collection of poems, published by Gold Wake Press. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. Her essays and feature stories have been published in places such as The Brooklyn Rail, the Forward, and Tablet Magazine. She was awarded an Editor’s Prize for Emerging Poets by Pleiades.

Heidi Diehl’s writing has appeared in the Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review, Witness, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College and has won fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Melissa Mesku is an engineer and writer with recent essays in Guernica, National Geographic, The Common, Carve,and Gulf Coast. Her experimental work has appeared in Math Magazine, Unlost Journal and Queen Mob’s Teahouse,and last month was anthologized by Essay Daily. She is the founding editor of New Worker Magazine and the artificial intelligence based literary experiment ➰➰➰ (“many loops”).

Julia Phillips is the author of debut novel DISAPPEARING EARTH. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, and The Paris Review and been supported by a Fulbright fellowship.

june 26 • hinterlands

Sari Botton is a writer living in Kingston, New York; Essays Editor for Longreads; editor of the award-winning anthology Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NY and its New York Times-Bestselling follow-up, Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for NY; and operator of Kingston Writers' Studio. She teaches at Catapult. 

Cathi Hanauer is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels and two essay anthologies, the second of which—The Bitch is Back—was an NPR Best Book of 2016. She has published articles, essays, and criticism in The New York Times, Elle, O, Real Simple, Shondaland, Refinery 29, and many other publications; she is co-founder, along with her husband, Daniel Jones, of the New York Times “Modern Love” column. She lives in Northampton, MA and New York City. Find her at www.cathihanauer.com, or watch her Ted Talk on “How I Became The Bitch in the House.” 

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious, and The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the BCALA. Praise Song for the Butterflies, her latest novel, was long-listed for the UK’s prestigious Women’s Prize.

Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels Hold Still and Want, which will be published in 2020. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Cut, The Paris Review, Elle, Guernica, Catapult, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She teaches writing.

MAY 15 • HINTERLANDS

Peter BD is a writer on the internet and author of the book milk & henny.

Caroline Hagood’s first book of poetry, Lunatic Speaks, was published in 2012, and her second poetry book, Making Maxine’s Baby, a small press bestseller, came out in 2015 from Hanging Loose Press. Her book-length essay, Ways of Looking at a Woman, came out in March of 2019 from Hanging Loose. Her writing has also appeared in The Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and the Economist. She’s a Staff Blogger for the Kenyon Review, a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Fordham University, and she teaches creative writing at Barnard College.

Evan James is the author of the novel Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe, about which Cosmopolitan magazine says, "Oh look, it's the perfect book." The Washington Post, meanwhile, says, "James is a writer to watch, one with a fresh take on American flaws and virtues that nevertheless feels old-school screwball.” He was a 2017 Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow at the Lambda Literary Writers' Retreat and received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first collection of personal essays, I've Been Wrong Before, will be published next year. He lives in Inwood.

Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collection Tap Out (Mariner / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). His writing has been supported the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Vanderbilt University, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His poems and essays appear widely, including in Ploughshares, New England Review, Agni, Lit Hub, and on U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s podcast The Slowdown. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. 

April 17 • Hinterlands

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb is the author of Images for Radical Politics (Rescue Press, 2016). She is from and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Devin Kelly is the author of In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and the co-host of the Dead Rabbits Reading Series. He is the winner of a Best of the Net Prize, and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian, LitHub, Catapult, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and more. He lives and teaches high school in New York City.

Rachel Lyon is a cofounder of Ditmas Lit! She is also the author of Self-Portrait with Boy (Scribner 2018), which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and which is in development at Topic Studios as a feature film. Rachel’s short work has appeared/is forthcoming in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, Longreads, and other publications; she has taught for Sackett Street, Catapult, Slice, and elsewhere. Visit her at www.rachellyon.work.

Larissa Pham is an artist and writer in Brooklyn. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Poetry Magazine, Bookforum, Guernica, The Nation, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Verso, The Rumpus, Garage, and elsewhere. Her fiction and poetry has been published in Triangle House and Shabby Doll House. She is the author of Fantasian (2016), a New Lovers novella from Badlands Unlimited. In 2017, she was an inaugural Yi Dae Up fellowship recipient from the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. She teaches at the Asian American Writers Workshop in New York City.

March 20 • Hinterlands

Originally from San Juan, Tania Pabón Acosta holds an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Puerto Rico, and an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Breadcrumbs Mag, The Acentos Review, Entropy and Pigeon Pages, among others; is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, and The Los Angeles Review, among others; and was chosen for AmpLit Fest’s Emerging Writer Showcase 2018.   

Ming Lauren Holden was raised on a zebra ranch on California’s central coast. She is the author of Refuge, selected by Lidia Yuknavitch as the winner of the inaugural Kore Press Memoir Award. She has also won Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Award, Chattahoochee Review’s Lamar York Nonfiction Prize and Glimmer Train’s Family Matters Fiction Prize. Ming’s poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, interviews, photography, and literary translations have appeared in The Daily Beast, Hayden’s Ferry, The Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Chantal Johnson holds an MA in English from New York University and a JD from Stanford Law School. She is a Senior Staff Attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services, where she represents tenants facing eviction. A 2018-2019 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow, Chantal is currently at work on her first novel.

Raymond Strom was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and moved from small town to small town in the Midwest as a child. He received his MFA from the City College of New York, where he now works as an academic advisor and studies romance languages. His writing has appeared in Fiction, Tweed’s, andThe New York Times. Northern Lights is his first novel.

FEBRUARY 20 • HINTERLANDS

Steffi Drewes is author of the poetry collection Tell Me Every Anchor Every Arrow (Kelsey Street Press, 2016) and four chapbooks, most recently New Animal (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in various journals and event series, including the 2018 Way Bay Poetry Assembly and postcard project at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She is also the recipient of writing and art residencies at Vermont Studio Center, The Desert House in California, and the Wassaic Project in New York. She works as a freelance writer and editor in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Briallen Hopper grew up in Tacoma, got a PhD in American literature from Princeton, and attended divinity school and taught writing at Yale. She is now an assistant professor of creative nonfiction at Queens College, CUNY. Her writing has appeared in Avidly, HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Inquiry, The New Republic, Newsweek, New York Magazine/The Cut, and elsewhere. Her first book, Hard to Love, is a collection of essays about love and friendship.

Leslie Jamison is the author of The Recovering, The Gin Closet, and The Empathy Exams. Her shorter work has appeared in places including The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer. For several years she was a columnist for the New York Times Book Review. Leslie teaches at the Columbia University MFA program, where she directs the nonfiction concentration and leads the Marian House Project. She lives in Brooklyn, with her family.

Daniel Poppick is the author of Fear of Description (Penguin, forthcoming fall 2019), selected for the National Poetry Series, and The Police (Omnidawn, 2017). His recent writing appears in BOMB, Kenyon Review, the PEN Poetry Series, The Fanzine, and at the Poetry Foundation. A recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony, he currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works as a copywriter and co-edits the Catenary Press with Rob Schlegel and Rawaan Alkhatib.

january 16 • Hinterlands

Ivanna Baranova is a Brooklyn-based poet. Her work has appeared in Metatron, glitterMOB, Peach Mag, Poetry Is Dead, and elsewhere. 

Sarah Bridgins’s poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, Buzzfeed, Bustle, the Fanzine, Sink Review, Big Lucks, Two Serious Ladies, Bone Bouquet, Pouch, Thrushand NAP, among other journals. She has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and is the cofounder/curator of the Ditmas Lit reading series with Rachel Lyon.

Diane Mehta’s poetry collection, Forest with Castanets, comes out in March 2019 with Four Way Books. She is finishing a historical novel set in 1946 India while working on a collection of essays. She has been an editor at PEN America’s Glossolalia, Guernica, and A Public Space. She lives in Brooklyn.

J.T. Price has lived in Brooklyn since 2001. His fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New England Review, Post Road Magazine, Guernica, Joyland, Juked, The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Literature, and elsewhere; nonfiction, interviews, and reviews with The Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB Magazine, The Scofield, and The Millions. As of Jan. 1st, 2019, he is the Managing Editor ofEpiphany Magazine.

DECEMBER 19 • HINTERLANDS

Sari Botton is a writer living in Kingston, New York; Essays Editor for Longreads; editor of the award-winning anthology Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NY and its New York Times-Bestselling follow-up, Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for NY; and operator of Kingston Writers' Studio. 

Sidik Fofana received an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU and teaches public school in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Epiphany and the Sewanee Review.

Alice Robb is the author of Why We Dream (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2018). She has written about science, dance and books for Elle, The New Republic, The Washington Post and other places. She lives in Brooklyn. 

Tony Tulathimutte’s novel Private Citizens was called “the first great millennial novel” by New York Magazine. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has written for The New York Times, VICE, WIRED, Playboy, The Believer, NPR’s Selected Shorts, The New Yorker, N+1, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and others. He has received a 2017 Whiting Award and an O. Henry Award, and appeared as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers. You can apply for his writing class in Brooklyn, CRIT, at crit.works.

NOVEMBER 14 • HINTERLANDS

Jaclyn Gilbert received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and BA from Yale University. She is the recipient of a research fellowship from the New York Public Library, a contributor to the Bread Loaf and Tin House Writers' Conferences, and her stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Post Road Magazine, Tin House, and Lit Hub. Late Air, her first novel, was published by Little A on November 13!

Gabrielle Moss is the author of Paperback Crush, a history of 80s/ 90s YA, and Glop, a parody of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop that was maybe too mean but guess what, we can't turn back time. 

Paige Taggart is the author of two full-length collections, Or Replica (Brooklyn Arts Press, Dec 2014) and Want for Lion (Trembling Pillow Press, March 2014) and 5 chapbooks, most recently I am Writing To You From Another Country; Translations of Henri Michaux (Greying Ghost Press). With her partner Sampson Starkweather (founding editor of Birds LLC) she runs an occasional reading series The Ecstasy and The Ecstasy, which focuses on bringing out of town, diverse readers to Brooklyn to read. She graduated from the New School with her MFA in Poetry in 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the NYFA in poetry and she served on the NYFA board of judges for poetry in 2011. She runs her own small business, a jewelry line (mactaggartjewelry.com). 

Kem Joy Ukwu's fiction has appeared in PANK, BLACKBERRY: a magazine, Carve, TINGE, Blue Lake Review, Jabberwock Review, Auburn Avenue, The Brooklyn Quarterly and Day One. Her short story collection manuscript, Locked Gray / Linked Blue, was selected as a finalist for the 2016 New American Fiction Prize and was published by the Kindred Books imprint from Brain Mill Press in 2018. As an Institute Scholar, she led a workshop each for the 2016 and 2018 Writing from the Margins Institute at Bloomfield College. Born and raised in the Bronx, she currently lives in New Jersey with her husband. More of her work can be found at kemjoyukwu.com.

OCTOBER 17 • HINTERLANDS

Katya Apekina has published stories in various literary magazines and translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. Born in Moscow, she currently lives in Los Angeles. The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish is her first novel; Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Harper's BAZAAR, BuzzFeed, Bustle, The Millions, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, and Fast Company all recommend it, and a Kirkus (starred) review called it "A dark and unforgettable first book." 

Kirstin Chen's new novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, has been named a Most Anticipated Upcoming Book by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper's Bazaar, and InStyle, among others. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She was the fall 2017 NTU-NAC National Writer in Residence in Singapore, and has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently resides in San Francisco. 

Monica Lewis lives in Brooklyn, New York and holds an MFA from Columbia University. Both her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Apogee Journal’s Perigee, and The Margins, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Boiler Journal, Flapperhouse, Five:2:One, among others. She is a VONA/Voices alumna and a 2017 “Best of the Net” poetry nominee. Her full collection of poetry, Sexting the Dead, will be published in 2018 by Unknown Press. 

Sampson Starkweather is the author of PAIN: The Board Game (Third Man Books, 2015) and The First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather (Birds, LLC, 2013). He is a founding editor of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He is also the author of nine chapbooks, most recently Until the Joy of Death Hits, pop/love audio-visual GIF poems from Spork Press, and Flux Capacitor, a collaborative audio poetry album from Black Cake Records. He lives in Ditmas Park.

SEPTEMBER 19 • HINTERLANDS

Andrew Badr is a programmer, artist, and poet living in NYC.

Wren Hanks is the author of The Rise of Genderqueer, a 2018 selection for Brain Mill Press's Mineral Point Poetry Series and a finalist for Gold Line Press's chapbook contest. A 2016 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow, his work has been anthologized in Best New Poets and appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Waxwing, ANMLY, Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. He is also the author of Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press), an Elgin Award finalist, and co-edited Curious Specimens (Sundress Publications). He lives in Brooklyn, and you can find him on twitter at @suitofscales.

Uzodinma Okehi is the author of Over for Rockwell, published by Hobart Books in 2015. He spent 2 years handing out zines on the subway. Wasn't as fun as he thought. His work has appeared in Pank, Hobart, and Bartleby Snopes, among other publications. He has an MFA in writing from New York University. He lives in Brooklyn. 

Whitney Porter holds a BA in Journalism from SUNY Empire State and works as a teacher currently with the Writers Studio in New York City. She is a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow and her work has appeared in Battered Suitcase, Ping Pong Literary Magazine, and Metazen, as well as the anthology ‘Writers Studio at 30,' published by Epiphany Magazine.

August 15 • hinterlands

Ian MacAllen's fiction has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Joyland Magazine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and elsewhere; his nonfiction has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, The Negatives, Electric Literature, Fiction Advocate, and elsewhere. He is the Deputy Editor of The Rumpus, holds an MA in English from Rutgers University, tweets @ianmacallen, and lives in Brooklyn.

Alizah Salario is the Arts & Entertainment Editor at the West Side Spirit newspaper. Her essays, criticism and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, at the Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at The New School, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Brad Wetherell is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan, where he was a Zell Fellow. His essays and short fiction have appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Missouri Review, Five Points, Berkeley Fiction Review, Salon, and elsewhere. The 32nd recipient of the Writer in Residence Fellowship from Saint Albans School in Washington, DC, he now lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he is finishing his first novel, The Shared Hour. You can find him online at bradwetherell.com and on Twitter at @bradwetherell.

James Yeh is a writer, journalist, and the features editor at the Believer. A founding editor of Gigantic and former culture editor at VICE, he lives in Brooklyn, is working on a novel, and has a dog and a truck. www.jamesyeh.com.

july 18 • Hinterlands

Iris Martin Cohen grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and studied Creative Nonfiction at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She currently lives in Brooklyn. The Little Clan is her first novel.

The daughter of a Merchant Marine and a Rockaway Beach babe, Alice Kaltman has always had an ocean-centric life. When she's not in the water, she writes about surfers, mermaids, and other oddballs. Alice is the author of the YA novel Wavehouse and the short fiction collection Staggerwing. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Montauk, NY, where she swims, surfs, and writes, weather and waves permitting.

Edward Mullany is the author of the books If I Falter at the Gallows, Figures for an Apocalypse, and The Three Sunrises, from Publishing Genius Press. He is also the creator of the comic strips Rachel and Ben and Excerpts from a Boring Man's Diary. He is the recipient of a Barthelme Fellowship from the Inprint Foundation, and his writing has recently appeared in Peach Mag, Alaska Quarterly Review, Carolina Quarterly and jubilat.

Thiahera Nurse is from Hollis, Queens, by way of Trinidad and Tobago. She received her MFA in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work can be found in The Offing, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. She writes for The Black Girls. 

June 20 • hinterlands

Brian Gresko is the editor of When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood (Penguin, 2014). His fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications. He co-runs Pete's Reading Series, teaches for the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and moderates the Authors in Conversation series for SLICE Literary. You can find him online at briangresko.com.

Anjali Khosla is an Assistant Professor of Journalism + Design at The New School. Her journalism, essay writing, poetry, and fiction have appeared in the New York Daily News, Fast Company, the New York Times Local: East Village, Nieman Lab, Tarpaulin Sky, Juked, GlitterPony, and other publications. Broadsides of her work have been published by Broadsided and The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance studies. She lives in New York.

Taylor Larsen is the author of the debut novel Stranger, Father, Beloved (Gallery Books, Simon & Schuster) and a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction writing. She teaches fiction writing for Catapult, Pace University, and SNHU. She is the co-editor for the literary website, The Negatives. Taylors stories have appeared in Joyland, The Brooklyn Review, and Windmill. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post, Bustle, Literary Hub, The Negatives, and Women Writers, Women’s Books. Originally from Alexandria, Virginia, Taylor currently resides with her family outside of NYC.

Jayson P Smith is a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry and a 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow (The Poetry Project). Their work appears in publications such as NYLON, Gulf Coast, & The Offing. Jayson currently lives + works in Brooklyn as founder of NOMAD Reading Series. www.jaysonpsmith.com

may 16 • hinterlands

Lawrence Detlor is a mathematician-poet from Manhattan. His long-ago adventures through the open-mic scene led to performances at the Times Square Shout Out, the Saturn Series Poetry Reading and the Cornelia Street Café, among others, and The Saint Ann’s Review has seen fit to publish his pentameters. He currently interprets exhibits and leads field trip sessions at the National Museum of Mathematics, and blogs about poetry, philosophy and math at aquaboa.wordpress.com.

Zefyr Lisowski is a writer, artist, and sea queen currently based in Brooklyn. She's a staffer at Apogee Journal, an MFA candidate in Poetry at Hunter College, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the VIDA Review, Brooklyn Poets, and Sea Foam Mag, among other places. Her moon's in Gemini.

Kyle McCarthy’s work has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2017, the Southwest Review, American Short Fiction, the Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Truman Capote Foundation, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Lighthouse Works, and the Jerome Foundation. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives right here in Ditmas Park. You can hear her story ‘Ancient Rome' on the March 22nd podcast of Selected Shorts.

Bob Raymonda is the founding editor of BreadcrumbsMag.com. He graduated from Purchase College with a focus in creative nonfiction. Some of his other work can be found in Peach Mag, Luna Luna, & OCCULUM. He is currently working on a collection of short stories called Love Sounds.

april 18 • HINTERLANDS

Maria Bowler is a writer from the middle of Canada. She's the Assistant Digital Editor at Commonweal Magazine, and the host and curator of a monthly literary conversation series at The Olmsted Salon.

Cat Fitzpatrick is a poet and editor. Her first book of poems is Glamourpuss and she co-edited the Stonewall-award-winning anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She writes narrative metrical poetry about trans women making terrible mistakes, and likes alcohol and jokes. Follow her on twitter @intermittentcat.

Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa is a writer, editor and the author of Rummage, which won the 2015 Little A Poetry Contest. She is a Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Lambda Literary fellow. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Some Call it Ballin, Gabby, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is a native of Fresno, CA.

Darley Stewart is a Scottish-Korean fiction writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Joyland Magazine, Funhouse Magazine, The Ocean State Review, Flapperhouse, The Brooklyn Rail, The Battersea Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2016 Fiction International Fellowship from Seoul Art Space and 2015 Ocean State Fiction Scholarship from The University of Rhode Island. An alumna of Brandeis University and The University of Edinburgh, she has completed a residency at Seoul Art Space and is at work on her first book.

february 28 • Hinterlands

Matthew Daddona is an editor, poet, freelance journalist, and fiction writer. He has published work in Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Outside Magazine, The Rumpus, Gigantic, Slice, The Southampton Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Forklift, Ohio, and LitHub, among other places. He was a founding member of FLASHPOINT NYC, an improvisational performance group, and he currently co-hosts the reading series “Kill Genre,” in which writers test their skills in alternate genres. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, and is at work on his novel.

Rachel Lyon is the author of the novel SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BOY (Scribner 2018). Her shorter work has appeared in Joyland, Iowa Review, McSweeney's, and other publications. She teaches for Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, Slice, and elsewhere, and sends out a weekly writing/thinking prompts newsletter at tinyletter.com/rachellyon. Visit Rachel IRL right here, at Ditmas Lit (!), or online at her website, www.rachellyon.work.

Halimah Marcus is the Executive Director of Electric Literature, an innovative digital publisher based in Brooklyn, and the Editor-in-Chief of its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. Her own fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, and elsewhere. She is the co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival Fiction Committee and has an MFA from Brooklyn College.

Monica McClure is the author of the poetry collection Tender Data (Birds, LLC, 2015) and the chapbooks Concomitance (Counterpath Press, 2016), Boss Parts 1& 2 (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016), Mala (Poor Claudia, 2014), and Mood Swing (Snacks Press 2013). Her poetry and prose has been featured in NPR, The Huffington Post, The Stranger, The Believer Magazine, Tin House, Jubilat, Fence, Flavorwire, The Hairpin, Poetry Foundation, The Los Angeles Review, The Lit Review, Emily Books, The Awl, and elsewhere. She has performed at MoMA, Silent Barn, Dixon Place Theatre, and &Now at CalArts.

January 17 • Hinterlands

Wendy Herlich’s short fiction has appeared in The Laurel Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Hawaii Review, and most recently, the Mississippi Review, where her story “Silence Is Golden” placed as a finalist in the 2017 Fiction Contest. As a playwright her work includes her three-part Evening of Awkward Romance series, which ran at The New York International Fringe Festival and was selected by Indie Theater Now for publication as part of their FringeNYC Collection.

T Kira Madden is a writer, photographer, and amateur magician living in New York City. She is the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Tin House, and is a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She serves as the founding Editor-in-chief of No Tokens, and her debut memoir is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2019.

Sandra Newman is the author of eight books. Her new novel The Heavens will come out from Grove Atlantic in 2019. Her previous novels are The Country of Ice Cream Star (one of NPR's and the Washington Post's Best Books of the Year, and a finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize for fiction), The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award), and Cake. She's also the author of four works of nonfiction, including How Not to Write a Novel (with co-author Howard Mittelmark).

Cooper Wilhelm is a writer, researcher, and occultist living in NYC. He is the author of a microchapbook about necromancy and breakups called Klaatu Verata Nikto (Ghost City Press/2016), a chapbook of poems about pigs called Swine Songs (Business Bear Press/2018), and a full-length collection of poems called DUMBHEART/STUPIDFACE (Civil Coping Mechanisms, Siren Songs/2017). His work has appeared in Time Out New York (under a fake name); Cosmonauts Avenue; Luna Luna; Yes, Poetry; Rust + Moth; Moonsick Magazine; Arc; Reality Beach; and elsewhere. He also writes poems on postcards and mails them to strangers he looks up in phonebooks at PoetryAndStrangers.com. He was the host of Into the Dark, a show for Radio Free Brooklyn about witchcraft. He tweets @cooperwilhelm.

December 6 • Hinterlands

happy birthday, ditmas Lit!

Sarah Bridgins' poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, Buzzfeed, Fanzine, Luna Luna, Bustle, Sink Review, and Big Lucks among other journals. She is a four time Pushcart Prize nominee and is the cofounder and cohost of Ditmas Lit! You can read more of her work at www.sarahbridgins.com.

Nandi Comer is the author of the forthcoming chapbook American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press). She has received fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Arts. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in To Light a Fire: 20 Years with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project (Wayne State University Press, 2014), Detroit Anthology (Rust Belt Chic Press, 2014), Crab Orchard Review, Green Mountains Review, Pluck!, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Indiana Review.

Natalie Eilbert is the author of Indictus, winner of Noemi Press's 2016 Poetry Prize, slated for publication in early 2018, as well as the poetry collection Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Granta, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2016 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at University of Wisconsin–Madison and is the founding editor of The Atlas Review.

Robin Wasserman is the author of the novel Girls on Fire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, VQR, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and she is also the bestselling author of several books for children and young adults. She teaches at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA program.

NOVEMBER 15 • HINTERLANDS

George Michelsen Foy’s latest non-fiction book, The Assassin Storm, is to be published in 2019 by Scribner. His thirteen novels (the latest entitled Mettle, 2010, University Press of New England) were published by Bantam-Doubleday, Viking Penguin, Bastei Lubbe (Germany) etc.: long-form non-fiction published in Harper’s, Rolling Stone et al.; short fiction and essays with Ep;phany Journal, Washington Square Review, Monkey Bicycle, Apeiron, Notre Dame Review, American Literary Review et al. A non-fiction work, Finding North: How navigation makes us human, came out with Flatiron / Macmillan in 2016. A non-fiction book on silence (Zero Decibels, Scribner) was published in 2011. Foy, who was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction, lives in New England and Brooklyn, teaches writing at NYU, and once, while under the influence of strong drink, walked backwards through the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland.

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize, and two chapbooks, most recently BFF. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies. Her paper collages have appeared in Hazlitt, BOMB Magazine, the Blue Earth Review, and Racquet & Tax, and have shown at Bushel Collective and PlatteForum. She’s been supported by fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Tin House, PlatteForum, Ucross, and Pocoapoco. She writes a monthly column for Hazlitt and teaches writing in New York City.

Pamela Ryder is the author of Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories (FC 2; University of Alabama Press), A Tendency to Be Gone: Stories (Dzanc Books), and Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories (FC 2). Her fiction has been published in many literary journals, including Black Warrior Review, Conjunctions, Prairie Schooner, The Quarterly, Shenandoah, and Unsaid.

Katie Willingham is the author of the poetry collection Unlikely Designs (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Her work has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center and the Helen Zell Writers Program where she received her MFA. You can find her poems in such journals as Kenyon Review, Bennington Review, Poem-A-Day, interrupture, Third Coast, and others. After four years in Michigan, she relocated to Brooklyn this summer.

OCTOBER 18 • HINTERLANDS

Joy Baglio's short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, The Iowa Review, Tin House's The Open Bar, New Ohio Review, PANK, and elsewhere. She earned an Honorable Mention in Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest in 2016 and was recently a finalist for scholarships from Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Smokelong Quarterly. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is the founder and director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in Northampton MA, where she teaches writing. She's currently at work on her first novel. Follow her on Twitter at @JoyBaglio or visit her online at www.joybaglio.com. 

Kim Coleman Foote is a writer of fiction, essays, and experimental prose. Her writing honors include fellowships from the NEA, NYFA, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She is ear-deep into a novel about the slave trade and a fiction collection based on her family's experience of the Great Migration in Alabama and New Jersey. She lives in Brooklyn.

Zack Graham’s short stories have appeared in Volume 1 Brooklyn, Seven Scribes, the Cobalt Review, Liars’ League NYC, and elsewhere, and his criticism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, and Electric Literature, among other publications.  He is at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.

Leslie Jones is a fiction writer from Anchorage, Alaska. Her stories have appeared in Narrative, The Baltimore Review, Necessary Fiction, and Day One. Her work is also forthcoming in The Masters Review's 2017 anthology of emerging writers selected by Roxane Gay. She received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark and lives in Ditmas Park.

9.20.2017 • Hinterlands

Matthew Hittinger is the author of The Masque of Marilyn (GOSS183, 2017), The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbooks Platos de Sal (Seven Kitchens Press, 2009), Narcissus Resists (GOSS183, 2009), and Pear Slip (Spire Press, 2007). He received his MFA from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program, where he won a Hopwood Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, has been adapted into art songs, and in 2012 Poets & Writers Magazine named him a Debut Poet on their 8th annual list. Matthew lives in Astoria, Queens.

Melissa Ragsly is a fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017, Joyland, Green Mountains Review, Epiphany, Cosmonauts Avenue and is an Associate Editor at A Public Space. She lives in the Hudson Valley where she is currently working on a novel about '90's Brit Pop. 

Madhuri Pavamani writes twisted love stories and dark poetry. She is a contributing writer for Brown Girl Magazine and co-owner of the blog Write Bitches. She is the author of the middle reader series THE SURVIVAL FILES, and the paranormal romance trilogy THE SANCTUM. Her urban fantasy trilogy THE KEEPER SERIES comes out with St. Martin’s Press this year.

Ashley P. Taylor is a Brooklyn-based writer and science journalist. Her science writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times blogs, The Scientist, Yale Medicine, and PopularMechanics.com. Her essays have appeared in LUMINA Online Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Rail, Entropy Magazine, and Catapult. Her essay, "Crying: An Exploration" (BrainDecoder, December, 2015) was listed among the "Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2015" in Best American Essays 2016. She moved to Borough Park this March. 

8.16.2017 • hinterlands

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017). Her work has appeared in venues including The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, The Believer, Glamour, Salon, The New York Times, Guernica, and Lenny Letter, and her essays have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and The Center for Women Writers. A three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Melissa has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Ragdale, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University and serves on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. 

Christopher Hermelin is a literary agent and writer living in Brooklyn. He has his MFA in fiction from the New School and a bachelor's in literature from UC Santa Cruz. He types custom stories for strangers on his typewriter as The Roving Typist, reviews snacks on Instagram as @brandnewflavor, and pretends to write a novel on his computer as himself. He's happy to be here.

Donika Kelly is the author of BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, long listed for the National Book Award (2016), and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (2017). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she received her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, and Gulf Coast.

Anton Solomonik works in the Digital Products department at W.W. Norton & Co. He likes to write about relationships, and he likes historic fiction. He designed the Instar Books roach, which makes him "the roach guy." You can follow his brand on Twitter at @xerxesverdammt.

7.19.2017  •  Hinterlands

Tobias Carroll is the author of the books Reel and Transitory, and is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn.

Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Hafizah Geter's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Linebreak, among others. Hafizah also serves on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, and co-curates the reading series EMPIRE with Ricardo Maldonado. She is on the poetry committee and book ends committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival and is currently the Content Editor & Publicity Coordinator at Poets House.

Lena Valencia's writing has been published in Joyland, The Masters Review, 7x7 LA, Storychord, and elsewhere. She teaches at Catapult and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, and for three years hosted and curated the HiFi Reading Series in Manhattan. She is the managing editor of the literary magazine One Story, and received her MFA in Fiction from The New School.

Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016) and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, and an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.

6.21.2017 • HINTERLANDS

Jessie Chaffee is the author of the debut novel Florence in Ecstasy (Unnamed Press, May 2017). She was awarded a Fulbright grant to Italy to complete the novel and was the writer-in-residence at Florence University of the Arts. Her writing has been published in The Rumpus, Slice, Electric Literature, Bluestem, Global City Review, and The Sigh Press, among others. She lives in New York City and is an editor at Words Without Borders. Find her at www.JessieChaffee.com.

Pat Hipp is a cultural attaché for the planet Earth. He tweets at @thehipp.

Jacob Kaplan is a writer from New York. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Guernica, among other places. He received his MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College.

Alice Sola Kim, Alice Sola Kim's writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, BuzzFeed Reader, The Village Voice, Lenny, and other publications. She is a winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, and has received grants and scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Elizabeth George Foundation.

Photos by Eric Fletcher

5.17.2017 • Hinterlands

Jennifer Baker is a creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, panels organizer for the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, and social media director and writing instructor for Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. She is a 2017 Queens Council of the Arts New Work Grant winner. She is the editor of the forthcoming short story collection Everyday People: The Color of Life with Atria Books. Her writing has appeared in Newtown Literary (for which her short story "The Pursuit of Happiness" was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize), Boston Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Poets & Writers magazine, The Other Stories podcast, and The Female Complaint anthology from Shade Mountain Press. She has also contributed to Forbes.com, The Billfold, The LitHub, and Bustle among other online publications.

Alice Kaltman is the author of the story collection STAGGERWING (Tortoise Books). Her stories appear in numerous journals including Hobart, Whiskey Paper, Joyland, and BULL: Men's Fiction, and in the anthologies THE PLEASURE YOU SUFFER and ON MONTAUK. Her work has twice been selected as Longform Fiction Picks, and was recently selected as a semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions 2017. Alice lives, writes and surfs in Brooklyn and Montauk, New York.

Stephen Langlois' work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Lit Hub, The Portland Review, Maudlin House, Split Lip Press, 3AM Magazine, and Monkeybicycle, among others. He is the recipient of a NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship from The Center for Fiction as well as a writing residency from The Blue Mountain Center. He also hosts BREW: An Evening of Literary Works, a reading series in Brooklyn, and serves as fiction editor for FLAPPERHOUSE. Visit him at www.stephenmlanglois.com.

Emily Schultz is the co-founder of Joyland Magazine, and creator of the blog Spending the Stephen King Money. Her novel Men Walking on Water, about Prohibition, released this spring in Canada. Her novel The Blondes, released in the U.S. with St. Martin’s Press, was named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Kirkus. It was optioned for TV. She lives in Brooklyn where she works as an editor and podcaster.

4.19.2017 • Hinterlands

in collaboration with The dITMAS WRITING WORKSHOPS

Kate Clifford is a knitting store manager and children’s art teacher based in Brooklyn, New York. She has been a member of the Ditmas Fiction workshops for two years. She has been working on her current project, a collection of short stories based on her childhood in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, since July.

Sara Lippmann's story collection, Doll Palace (Dock Street Press) was long-listed for the 2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She was the recipient of an artist’s fellowship in fiction from New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and her work has appeared in Slice Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Story South, Midnight Breakfast, Wigleaf and elsewhere. She teaches with Ditmas Writing Workshops and dicks around on twitter @saralippmann.

Rachel Sherman holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Fence, Catapult, Conjunctions, and n+1, among other publications. Her first book, The First Hurt, was short-listed for the Story Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and was named one of the 25 Books to Remember in 2006 by the New York Public Library. Her first novel, Living Room (2009) was commended for its “perfect pacing” by The New York Times Book Review. She teaches writing at Rutgers, Columbia and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities, and leads the Ditmas Writing Workshops.

Shayne Terry lives and writes in Brooklyn. Her story "Turtles" received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train's May/June 2016 Short Story Award for New Writers contest. She was a contributor at the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work is forthcoming in American Chordata. She is working on a novel.

3.21.2017 • Sycamore

I.S. Jones is a writer, educator, and hip-hop head hailing from Southern California. She is a fellow with The Watering Hole and BOAAT Writer's Retreat. Her work has appeared in The Harpoon Review, Fat City Review, Qua Magazine, The Blueshift Journal, SunDog Lit, Matador Review, Wusgood.black, and other publications, and has received nominations for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of The Net Anthology (twice). She is the Assistant Editor at the literary journal Chaparral.

Sarah Larson, The New Yorker's roving cultural correspondent, writes about pop culture for The New Yorker and newyorker.com.

Jonathan Reiss lives in Brooklyn. He writes for whoever will let him. Thus far that's included Spin Magazine, Interview Magazine, The Rumpus, The Millions, Complex, The Source, NY Press, Tablet, and The New York Observer. His first book will be published in Spring of 2016 by Instar Books.

Charif Shanahan's poems have appeared in Baffler, Boston Review, Callaloo, Literary Hub, New Republic, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. His first collection, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing (SIU Press, 2017), won the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. A 2016 nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Shanahan is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Cave Canem Foundation, Frost Place, the Fulbright Program/IIE, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Stanford University, where he is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry.

Photos by Anita Stevens Rundles

2.21.2017 • Sycamore

Lisa Marie Basile is the author of Apocryphal (Noctuary Press) and a few chapbooks, including Andalucia (Poetry Society of NY) and war/lock (Hyacinth Girl). She’s the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine. Her work has been published in Best Small Fictions, Tarpaulin Sky, The Atlas Review, PANK, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, the Tin House blog and Ampersand Review. She’s also a journalist and editor. Entropy recently named one of her essays a Best-Read for 2016.

Evan James has written for Oxford American, Travel + Leisure, Catapult, The New York Times, The New York Observer, and many other publications. His essay "Lovers' Theme" was selected by Eula Biss as the winner of the 2016 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a bookseller at Three Lives & Company. He lives in Ditmas Park.

Miracle Jones is from Texas. He is a Sagittarius. He is a very private person.

Rebecca Schiff's short story collection The Bed Moved is out in paperback on February 7. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, The Guardian, Fence, The American Reader, Guernica, BuzzFeed, and Lenny Letter. She lives in Prospect Heights.

Photos by Eric Fletcher

1.17.2017 • Sycamore

Wren Hanks is the author of Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press) and Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press). A 2016 Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow, their recent work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2016, Gigantic Sequins, Bone Bouquet, Drunken Boat, and elsewhere. Their third chapbook, gar child, is forthcoming from Tree Light Books in 2017. An Associate Editor for Sundress Publications and Publicist at The Feminist Press, they live in Brooklyn.

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, Hedgebrook, Poets House, and the Vermont Studio Center. She serves as East Coast Editor of the independent press Jamii Publishing, and is Founder and Curator of the reading series Soul Sister Revue. 

Ben Lasman is a writer and editor living in New York. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, Wired, and Cousin Corinne's Reminder. He is a former writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and is a copy editor at Wine Spectator magazine.

Ryan Teitman is the author of the poetry collection Litany for the City (BOA Editions, 2012), and his poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, New England Review, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Yale Review. He lives in Philadelphia and writes the newsletter I Refuse to Explain.

Photographs by Debra Pearlman

12.20.2016 • Sycamore

Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and been given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. He is the editor of BuzzFeed Books and co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes). More at www.isaacfitzgerald.net.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of The Dream of Doctor Bantam and The Black Emerald, as well as the copublisher of Instar Books. She is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow in fiction, and she draws comics also, even. She lives in Brooklyn.

Gabrielle Moss is the author of Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous & Feel Pretentious. She's an associate editor at Bustle.com, and her work has appeared in Slate, GQ, The Toast, The Hairpin & elsewhere. She was the inspiration for the lady Gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but cannot speak about it due to a pending lawsuit." Follow her on Twitter at @Gaby_Moss.

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is author of IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016), Nature Poem (forthcoming 2017 from Tin House Books), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, 2016 Tin House summer poetry scholar, and has poems in BOMB, Tin House, and the Offing. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker. @heyteebs

Photographs by Eric Fletcher