MASTHEAD
DIRECTOR & EDITOR
Caryl Pagel is the author of three books of poetry: Free Clean Fill Dirt (University of Akron, 2022), Twice Told (University of Akron Press), and Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death (Factory Hollow Press), as well as a collection of essays, Out Of Nowhere Into Nothing (FC2). She’s a publisher and editor at Rescue Press and teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program.
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR & EDITOR
Hilary Plum is the author of several books including the novel Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose; Hole Studies, an essay collection from Fonograf Editions; and a volume of poetry, Excisions, from Black Lawrence. She was the recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award for the work of nonfiction Watchfires. She teaches fiction, nonfiction, and editing & publishing at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA Program. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. Recent work has appeared in Granta, College Literature, American Poetry Review, Fence, and elsewhere.
MANAGING EDITOR
Zach Peckham is a writer, editor, and educator. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in jubilat, Territory, Poetry Northwest, Always Crashing, American Book Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from the NEOMFA and teaches at Cleveland State and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the managing editor at the CSU Poetry Center and an editor-at-large at Cleveland Review of Books. He also runs a small press called Community Mausoleum and a journal called Coma.
ANISFIELD-WOLF FELLOW IN WRITING & PUBLISHING
Xan Forest Phillips, a poet hailing from rural Ohio, is the acclaimed author of HULL (Nightboat Books, 2019) and a recipient of the Whiting Award. He is the 2024-2026 Anisfield Wolf Fellow in Writing and Publishing at Cleveland State University and has received fellowships from Brown University, Callaloo, Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. Xan is the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, the 2023 Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Award, and a 2022 Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Grant. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Czech, and Slovenian. Xan’s poetry can be found in Berlin Quarterly Review, BOMB Magazine, Crazyhorse, Poets.org, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Joey Rooney is a writer primarily of fiction, but also of poetry and creative nonfiction, and a third-year candidate in the NEOMFA Program. Born and raised on the west side of Cleveland, he received his MA in English from Case Western Reserve University and his MA in Theology and Religious Studies from John Carroll University.
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Kristen Tetzmann (née Tetzlaff) is a poet and painter from Wisconsin. She received her BA in Art Therapy and Creative Writing from Mount Mary University. She is a second-year poetry candidate in the NEOMFA program. Her work has appeared in Bodega Magazine, Furrow, Respect Your Mother, and elsewhere. She knows how to say “watermelon” in twenty-six languages.
