Purchase MQR 57:3 (Summer 2018) in print or as a downloadable PDF.
Angela Morales | essay | “Querida Angelita”
Angela Morales is the author of the essay collection The Girls in My Town, and winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, The Southwest Review, The Southern Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is currently working on her second essay collection. Find out more at angelamorales.net, or follow her on Twitter @professorbgirl.
Zhang Zao (translated by Gavin Gao) | poetry | “This Very Hour”
Zhang Zao was born in Changsha, Hunan province. He emigrated from China to Germany in 1986 and earned a PhD in comparative literature from University of Tubingen. He received many awards for his work as a literary critic, translator, scholar and poet, including the 1999 Anne Kao Prize for Lyric Poetry and the 1998-1999 Poetry Prize sponsored by the literary magazine Zuojia, among others. Zhang only published one book of poetry, chun-qiu lai xin (Letters between Spring and Autumn), during his lifetime. He died of cancer in 2010.
Gavin Gao was born in Beijing. He received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from The University of Michigan, where he received two Avery Hopwood Awards, and the Arthur Miller Arts Award for writing. His poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Poet Lore, The Rise Up Review, Inscape Journal, and elsewhere.
Jeffrey Skinner | poetry | “Shush,” “The Fields,” & “The Truth About Men”
Jeffrey Skinner is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award. His most recent book of poems, Chance Divine, won the Field Poetry Prize. Other recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, and The Los Angeles Review. He is the co-founder of Sarabande Books.
Perry Janes | fiction | “Terrariums”
Perry Janes is a writer and filmmaker from Metro Detroit, Michigan. His written work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, The Nashville Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Glimmer Train, and The Normal School. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Hopwood Award, and the AMPAS Student Academy Award. A candidate in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, he currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Follow him on Instagram @perry.janes.
Michael McKee-Green | poetry | “The Fold”
Michael McKee-Green’s first book of poems, Fugue Figure (Kent State University Press), was selected by Khaled Mattawa as the winner of the 2017 Stan and Tom Wick Prize. A recipient of awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the Cabin Literary Center, Green is a 2018 artist in residence at the Boise Public Library at Bown Crossing. He currently resides in Idaho, where he sits on the editorial board for Ahsahta Press. Find out more at michaelmckeegreen.com.
Gretchen Knapp | essay | “Animal Postures”
Gretchen Knapp is a writer, editor, and publishing consultant. Her current work, the Bra Project Survey, collects women’s oral histories around their experiences with bras, the body, and self-image. She holds an MFA from Indiana University, where she served as editor of Indiana Review and won an AWP Intro Award for her fiction. “Animal Postures” is an excerpt from her memoir, The Forgetting Curve. Follow her on Twitter @gretchenk100.
Jasmine V. Bailey | poetry | “This Is Not a Poem About Leah, Let Alone Zilpah and Bilhah,” “A Vulture in China,” “The Abolition of Money,” & “Persephone Finds a Deeper Hell”
Jasmine Bailey’s first poetry collection, Alexandria, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2014 and won the Central New York Book Award. Her second collection, Disappeared, was just published by Carnegie Mellon. She has been an O’Connor fellow at Colgate Univer-sity and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. She is a PhD student at Texas Tech University.
Anthony Inverso | fiction | “Sophomore Choices”
Anthony Inverso lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Water~Stone Review, Post Road Magazine, Carve Magazine, and other publications.
Julian Randall | poetry | “Icarus Imposter Syndrome” & “Insomniac Soliloquy”
Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT, and the Watering Hole, and was the 2015 National College Slam (CUPSI) Best Poet. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times Magazine, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He is a poetry MFA candidate at Ole Miss. His first book, Refuse, is the winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry prize and will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2018. Follow him on Twitter @JulianThePoet.
torrin a. greathouse | poetry | “Self-portrait as Tragedy Model of Disability”
torrin a. greathouse is a genderqueer trans woman & cripple-punk from Southern California. Her work is published or forthcoming in Poets.org, Bettering American Poetry, The Offing, and other publications. She is the author of two chapbooks, There is a Case That I Am (Damaged Goods, 2017) and boy/girl/ghost (TAR Chapbook Series, 2018). Find out more at tagreathousepoetry.wixsite.com, or follow her on Facebook @TAGreathousePoetry or Twitter @TAGreathouse.
Matt Jones | essay | “Children of the Sun”
Matt Jones is a graduate of the University of Alabama MFA program. His prose has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, The Atlantic, Ruminate, Post Road, and other publications. He has been awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and will be a writer-in-residence at Willowtail Springs and The Leopold Writing Program in the summer of 2018. Find out more at mattjonesfiction.com, or follow him on Twitter @tinyarmoredone.
Jenna Le | poetry | “Homemade Eclipse Glasses”
Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018; 1st ed. pub. by Anchor & Plume, 2016), which won Second Place in the Elgin Awards. She works as a physician and educator in New Hampshire. Find out more at jennalewriting.com, or follow her on Instagram @jennalewriting.
Judy Halebsky | poetry | “The Playoffs” & “About Last Night”
Judy Halebsky is the author of Tree Line and Sky=Empty, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her honors include fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Dominican University of California and lives in Oakland. Find out more at judyhalebsky.com.
Karen Benning | essay | “The Elements”
Karen Benning’s essays have appeared in Boulevard, The Chattahoochee Review, The Morning News, and several other literary journals. She is currently working on two book-length manuscripts. She received her MFA from the University of Alaska Anchorage and now lives in the dry climate of Boise, Idaho with her husband.
Peter Krumbach | poetry | “Migration” & “Swimmer”
Peter Krumbach was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. His work has appeared in The Adroit, Columbia Poetry Review, Prelude, RHINO, Salamander, and elsewhere. Diane Seuss selected his prose poem “Fugitive” as the Mid-American Review 2017 Fineline Competition winner. He lives in Del Mar, California.
Jennifer De Leon | essay | “Work”
Jennifer De Leon is the author of the YA novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, forthcoming from Atheneum/Simon & Schuster (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books), and the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). Find out more at jenniferdeleonauthor.com, or follow her on Twitter @jdeleonwriter.
Angie Estes | poetry | “Le Secret de Compostelle”
Angie Estes’s sixth collection of poems, Parole, is forthcoming from Oberlin College Press in October 2018. Her previous book, Enchantée, won the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, and Tryst was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Find out more at angieestes.com.
Lindsey Drager | fiction | “Of Breadcrumbs and Constellations”
Lindsey Drager is the author of the novels The Lost Daughter Collective (Dzanc Books, 2017) and The Sorrow Proper (Dzanc Books, 2015). She is an assistant professor at the College of Charleston and the associate fiction editor of Crazyhorse.
Flower Conroy | poetry | “Unrequited Girl as Ouroboros”
Flower Conroy is the author of the chapbooks Facts About Snakes & Hearts; The Awful Suicidal Swans; and Escape to Nowhere. Her poetry has appeared in American Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Gargoyle and other journals. She is the current Poet Laureate of Key West.
Sarah Appleton Pine | essay | “Say Uncle”
Sarah Appleton Pine has published work in The Rumpus, The Ploughshares Blog, The Los Angeles Review, and Grist. She earned her MFA from Western Washington University. She teaches at Cranbrook Kingswood School, where she lives with a hundred girls, her husband, and their beautiful Australian Shepherd, Zoë. You can find her on Twitter @sarahkapples.
Elizabeth Gaffney | fiction | “Six-X”
Elizabeth Gaffney is the author of the novels Metropolis and When the World Was Young. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, A Public Space, the Mississippi Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has translated four books from German. She teaches writing at Queens University, NYU, and the New School, and serves as the editor-at-large of A Public Space. Find out more at elizabethgaffney.net, or follow her on Twitter @elizgaffney.
Soren Stockman | poetry | “The Animal”
Soren Stockman’s poems have appeared in Iowa Review, the PEN Poetry Series, Tin House Online, The Literary Review, and Narrative, which awarded him First Place in the 2013 Narrative 30 Below Contest. His critical writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, Playboy, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships from NYU, the Ucross Foundation, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and the Lacawac Artists’ Residency, he now works at the NYU Creative Writing Program. Follow him on Twitter @SorenStockman or on Facebook @soren.stockman.
Kai Carlson-Wee | poetry | “Heat Stroke in Redding”
Kai Carlson-Wee is the author of RAIL (BOA Editions, 2018). His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Best New Poets, New England Review, The Southern Review, and The Missouri Review, which awarded him the 2013 Editor’s Prize. His photography has been featured in Narrative Magazine and his poetry film, Riding the Highline, has screened at film festivals across the country. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, he lives in San Francisco and teaches poetry at Stanford University. Find out more at kaicarlsonwee.com, or follow him on Twitter @kaicarlsonwee or Instagram @kaicarlsonwee.
