James Tate Hill is the author of a memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff, coming July 2021 from W. W. Norton. His essays have been listed as Notable in the 2019 and 2020 editions of Best American Essays, and he won the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel for Academy Gothic. He serves as fiction editor for the literary journal Monkeybicycle and contributing editor for Literary Hub, where he writes a monthly audiobooks column. He lives in Greensboro with his wife.
Terry L. Kennedy is the author of the poetry collection New River Breakdown. His work appears in a variety of journals and magazines and has been anthologized in Gracious: Poems from the 21st Century South, Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry and The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume VII: North Carolina, among others. He currently serves as the Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and as Editor for both The Greensboro Review and the online journal, storySouth.
Zelda Lockhart holds a PhD in Expressive Arts Therapies, an MA in Literature, and a certificate in writing, directing and editing from the New York Film Academy. Her latest books include Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Doris Payne with Zelda Lockhart, and The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry. Lockhart is author of novels Fifth Born, a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award finalist; Cold Running Creek, a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction Awardee; and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle, 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is Director at Her Story Garden Studios: Inspiring Black Women to Self-Define, Heal and Liberate Through the Literary Arts, and Publisher at LaVenson Press: Publishing for Women & Girls of Color. Organizations globally have recognized Dr. Lockhart’s talent as an inspiring teacher, facilitator and public speaker.
Ashley Lumpkin is a Georgia-raised, Carolina-based writer, editor, actor, and educator. She is the author of five poetry collections: {} At First Sight, Second Glance, Terrorism and Other Topics for Tea, #AshleyLumpkin, and Genesis. Her book I Hate You All Equally is a collection of conversations from her years as a classroom teacher. A lover of performance as well as the written word, she has been a competing member of the Bull City Slam Team since 2015 and currently serves as its assistant coach. She is one-fifth (and only Slytherin member) of the Big Dreams Collective and currently serves as a member-at-large on the board of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Above all else, Ashley considers herself a teacher, poet, and fryer of food. She is a lover of mathematics and language. She loves you too.
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair, the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities, and has been honored with a UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has published six collections of poetry with Press 53, including Exit, pursued by a bear which consists of poems triggered by stage directions in Shakespeare. His book This Miraculous Turning earned the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family. In 2019, he published his debut collection of fiction, Bleachers, which consists of fifty-four linked pieces that take place during a youth soccer game. He also has edited the collection of film criticism A Century of the Marx Brothers, and with his wife, Danielle Tarmey, he researched and wrote two editions of A Guide to North Carolina’s Wineries.
More information about his work is available at www.josephrobertmills.com.
Valerie Nieman’s fourth novel, To the Bones, a folk horror/mystery set in the West Virginia coalfields, appeared in 2019 and has been acclaimed as “a parable of capitalism and environmental degradation.” She is also the author of Neena Gathering, a post-apocalyptic YA set in Appalachia. Her third poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, takes place amid the grit and glamor of a mid-century carnival. Her work has appeared widely and been included in numerous anthologies. She has held NEA and state writing fellowships. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she teaches writing at NC A&T State University. Backwater, a YA/crossover thriller set in North Carolina, will be published by Fitzroy Books/Regal House early in 2022.
Emilia Phillips (she/they) is the author of four poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Embouchure (2021), and four chapbooks. Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize and a 2019–2020 NC Arts Council Fellowship, Phillips’s poems, lyric essays, and book reviews appear widely in literary publications including Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s a faculty member in the MFA Writing Program and the Department of English and cross-listed faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at UNC Greensboro. She’s currently at work on several projects, including: Wound Revisions, a collection of lyric essays; La Dichosa, a fifth collection of poems; and Unlonelied by Poems, a YouTube channel of poetry educational resources.
Ross White is the author of Charm Offensive, winner of the 2019 Sexton Prize, and three chapbooks: How We Came Upon the Colony, The Polite Society, and Valley of Want. He is the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He teaches creative writing and grammar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is the editor of Four Way Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others.
Eric G. Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University and author of five works of creative nonfiction: Keep It Fake, How to Make a Soul, Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace, and Against Happiness. His essays have appeared in the Portland Review, Hotel Amerika, The Fanzine, Georgia Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Oxford American, The New York Times, The LA Times, Our State, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has also published a volume for Muse Books: The Iowa Series in Creativity and Writing, My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing. He recently published a work of fiction, Polaris Ghost. His has a book forthcoming from Penguin, How to Be Weird, a compendium of exercises, meditations, riddles, and drawings.