Purchase MQR 55:1 (Winter 2016) in print or as a downloadable PDF.
ESSAYS
Philip Beidler: “This Way to the Führerbunker: Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße, Berlin, Mitte”
Beidler is the Margaret and William Going Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where he has taught American literature since receiving his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1974. He has authored several books on the subject of war and Vietnam, including American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam , Re-writing America: Vietnam Authors in Their Generation, Scriptures for a Generation: What We Were Reading in the ’60s, and Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam. His most recent book is The Island Called Paradise: Cuba in History, Literature, and the Arts. Forthcoming is his new book, entitled Beautiful War: Studies in a Dreadful Fascination.
Meghan Forbes: “What I Could Lose: The Fate of Lucia Moholy”
Forbes is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan completing a dissertation on the interwar avant-garde in Europe. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, and recently returned from Berlin, Germany, where she held a Fulbright grant for dissertation research. She is the creator and coeditor of harlequin creature, a handmade arts and literary journal; elsewhere, her reviews and translation have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Words without Borders, and molossus. She is a regular contributor to the MQR Blog. Follow her on Twitter @harlequin_c.
Caille Millner: “Four Murders”
Millner is the author of a memoir, The Golden Road: Notes on my Gentrification (Penguin Press, 2007), which won the Barnes & Noble Emerging Writers Award and was listed as one of the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Notable Books of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva and Joyland, and her nonfiction has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Los Angeles Review of Books, and A New Literary History of America (Harvard University Press). She is an editorial writer and weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Find out more at caillemillner.com or follow her on Twitter @caillemillner.
Derek Mong: “Nude Dude Poets”
Mong is the author of two collections from Saturnalia Books, Other Romes (2011) and The Identity Thief (forthcoming 2018). A poet, essayist, and collaborative translator from the Russian—he and his wife, Anne O. Fisher, recently completed The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin—he holds a PhD from Stanford University. New work appears in Two Lines, the Gettysburg Review, and the Brooklyn Rail. He blogs at Kenyon Review Online. Find out more at derekmong.com or follow him on Twitter @derek_mong.
POEMS
Joel Brouwer: “History Isn’t a Story”
Brouwer is the author of four books of poems, including Off Message (Four Way Books, 2016), And So (Four Way Books, 2009), Centuries (Four Way Books, 2003), and Exactly What Happened (Purdue University Press, 1999). He’s held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His work has appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, Chelsea, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, McSweeney’s, New England Review, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Progressive, Tin House, Washington Post Book World, and other publications. He is the Chair of the Department of English at the University of Alabama. Find out more at joelbrouwer.org or follow him on Twitter @joel_brouwer.
Laura McCullough: “Wearing Sunglasses Against the Sun & Smell of Smoke”
McCullough’s next book of poems, Jersey Mercy, is forthcoming in 2016. Her other collections include Rigger Death & Hoist Another (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), Panic (Alice James Books, 2011), Speech Acts (Black Lawrence Press, 2010), What Men Want: Poems (XOXOX Press, 2008), and The Dancing Bear (Open Book Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Guernica, The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, Pank, Hotel America, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and magazines. Her poem “And There Were Dandelions” was selected for Best American Poetry 2015. Find out more at lauramccullough.org.
Shivani Mehta: “Between the Wars,” “Revelation,” and “The Statues”
Mehta was born in Mumbai and raised in Singapore. Her first book, Useful Information for the Soon-to-be Beheaded, is out from Press 53, and her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Coachella Review, Fjord’s Review, Generations Literary Journal, Hotel Amerika, Midwest Quarterly Review, Mudfish Magazine, Normal School, and the Prose Poem Project. One of her poems was a winner in Narrative Magazine’s annual poetry contest in 2011. Mehta earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Syracuse University College of Law in 2002.
Marilyn Nelson: “Me Jane,” “In a Moral Wilderness,” “Great Awakening,” “Black Point Preserve,” and “Warrick”
Nelson is the author or translator of over twenty-four books. Her latest collections include American Ace (Dial, 2016), My Seneca Village (Namelos, 2015), and How I Discovered Poetry (Dial, 2014). Honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, the Department of the Army’s Commander’s Award for Public Service, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut, and held the office of Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001 to 2006. Nelson was awarded the Frost Medal in 2012. In 2013, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at marilyn-nelson.com.
Jóanes Nielsen: “Plague”
Nielsen, former dockworker turned political activist and writer, is a leading figure in contemporary Faroese literature. He has published seventeen books including the novel Brahmadellarnir, which was nominated for the 2013 Nordic Counsel’s Literary Prize and is forthcoming in German translation from Random House.
Tóta Árnadóttir holds an MA in Faroese language and literature from the Faroese University, where she is currently an assistant professor in oral tradition.
Matthew Landrum is a writer and teacher, and the poetry editor of Structo Magazine. His chapbook, The Lonesome Savior–translations of poems from the Faroese by Agnar Artúvertin–was released by Cold Hub Press in 2015. Find out more at matthewlandrum.com or follow him on Twitter @matthewlandrum.
Diana Reaves: “Calling” and “With a Trowel”
Reaves grew up on the Chattahoochee River in southern Alabama. She holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation, and her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Meridian, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Raleigh Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, among other journals.
David Roderick: “Preamble” and “Nikon Fugue”
Roderick’s first book of poems, Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize. The Pitt Poetry Series published his second book, The Americans, in 2014. He completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachuesetts and received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. 
He teaches creative writing and poetry in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and hosts The Rumpus Late Nite Poetry Show. Find out more at davidroderick.net or follow him on Twitter @droderick77.
John Rybicki: “A River Is Not a Watery Rope”
Rybicki’s latest book of poems, When All the World is Old, was published in 2012 by Lookout Books. He is also the author of Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 1996) and We Bed Down Into Water: Poems (Triquarterly, 2008). 
His work has appeared in Ploughshares, the American Poetry Review, Poetry, Field, Triquarterly, Ecotone, and The Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He teaches poetry writing in Detroit high schools through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. He lives in Augusta, Michigan.
Chelsea Wagenaar: “Delivery Room (Sacrament Under Erasure)”
Wagenaar is the author of Mercy Spurs the Bone (Anhinga Press, 2015), winner of the 2013 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and is currently a doctoral fellow at the University of North Texas. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Image, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Plume, and the Southern Poetry Review. She lives in Denton, Texas.
FICTION
Sara Batkie: “Foreigners”
Batkie received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2010. Previous work has appeared in Gulf Coast, LIT, Epiphany, and New Orleans Review. Her story “Cleavage” was an honorable mention in Best American Short Stories 2011. Follow her on Twitter @batkvetch.
Ruchama King Feuerman: “Kill Fonzie”
Feuerman was born in Nashville, grew up in Virginia and Maryland, and when she was seventeen, moved to Israel. She later returned to the US to pursue an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. 
Her latest novel, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (New York Review Books, 2014)), received rave reviews from the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, and the Wall Street Journal, which deemed it the best novel of the year. Her novel Seven Blessings was released by St. Martin’s in 2004. Feuerman is also the author of four children’s books. Find out more at ruchamafeuerman.com or follow her on Twitter @RuchamaF.
Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier: “No Signal, No Service”
Hermsmeier has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and is currently a teacher in San Diego. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Flash Fiction Magazine, Gemini, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among others. Her short story “When the Bees Come Back” was the winner of Gemini magazine’s 2015 Flash Fiction Contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Follow her on Twitter @ashaherms.
Glori Simmons: “Putting Things in Order”
Simmons is the author of Graft, poems (Truman State University Press, 2001) and the forthcoming story collection, Suffering Fools, recipient of the Spokane Prize from Willow Springs Editions. 
She attended the University of Washington, earned an MFA from the University of Michigan, and received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. She lives in Oakland, California, and is director of the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco.
Image credits: Photo of Meghan Forbes by Sasha Arutyunova. Photo of Ashley Hermsmeier by Lyn Rosten. Photo of Matthew Landrum by Kurt Simonson. Photo of Marilyn Nelson by Curt Richter. Photo of JN courtesy of dagsavisen.no.