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Steven Sherrill is not, absolutely not, a traditional academic, nor a scholar. But Steven Sherrill has been making trouble with words since 8th grade, when he was suspended from school for two weeks for a story he wrote. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade, ricocheted around the southern US for years, eventually earning a Welding Diploma from a community college, which led circuitously to an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and as of recently, Professor Emeritus of English and Integrative Arts at Penn State University, with five novels, a book of poems, and a memoir in the world. His first novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, is translated into 8 languages and was released as an audiobook. His second novel, Visits From the Drowned Girl, published by Random House (and nominated by them for the Pulitzer Prize), US and Canongate, UK was released in June 2004. The Locktender’s House, novel #3, was released by Random House in Spring 2008. In November 2010, CW Books released the poetry collection, Ersatz Anatomy. Louisiana State University Press: Yellow Shoe Fiction Series released the novel JOY, PA, in March 2015. The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time, was published in the fall of 2016, and lauded by Alan Gurganus in The New York Times Book Review. Motorcycles, Minotaurs, & Banjos, the memoir, is a book about twenty-one days and sixty years. Now, with retirement shoving hard from behind, there are paintings underway in the studio, sonic mayhem all over the house, and always a novel in the works.

Sherrie Flick is the author of three story collections:I Have Not Considered Consequences, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Whiskey, Etc., all published by Autumn House Press. Her novel, Reconsidering Happiness, and her debut essay collection, Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist, are both published by University of Nebraska Press. She is co-editor for the Norton anthology Flash Fiction America, served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018, and is a senior editor at SmokeLongQuarterly. She is the 2025 McGee Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at Davidson College.

Avitus B(uckhaulter) Carle lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her debut flash fiction collection, These Worn Bodies, was the winner of the 2023 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Fractured Lit., X-R-A-Y Litmag, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), The Rumpus, Waxwing, JMWW, and Shondaland, among others.