Jason Arment served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Machine Gunner in the USMC. He earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in many publications including The Burrow Press Review (Push Cart nomination), Phoebe (BAE 2016 Notable), The Florida Review (Best American Essays inclusion), and Veterans Writing Project. Jason lives in Denver where he coordinates the Denver Veterans Writing Workshop with the Colorado Humanities and Lighthouse.
Tyler Atwood was marooned on this planet as an infant, and has been searching for home ever since. His first collection of poetry is an electric sheep jumps to greener pasture but Tyler’s got more to say. A lot more. His work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, The Colorado Independent, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Denver, Colorado.
Cam Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and the chapbook Transit (Button Poetry, 2015). A Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, his poetry has appeared in Narrative, The Baffler, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Cam is a doctoral candidate in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University and has essays forthcoming/in Science Fiction Studies and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
John W Barrios is a graduate of Buffalo State College and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. He is a proud member of the original team at NAILED, as a Writer and Contributing Editor. His first collection of poetry is Here Comes the New Joy and he’s steadily working on his second.
Eirean Bradley is a seven-time National Poetry Slam competitor, a two-time National Poetry Slam finalist, and former Portland Grand Slam champ. He has toured extensively, showcasing his prowess in 46 states, and is known for being equal parts cuddly and cranky and one of the foulest-mouthed humans alive. He loves poetry and bacon, not in that order. the I in team is his first book (with real, perfect binding and everything). The Little BIG Book of Go Kill Yourself is his second.
Suzanne Burns writes mostly in bed, mostly in the late afternoon. When her stories aren’t appearing in the Chicago Tribune, she scans Pinterest for cake recipes to enter in local county fairs. She written a lot of books, including the story collection, The Veneration of Monsters (Dzanc Books, 2017) which landed on Kirkus’ Best Books of 2017 list. Her next book, Boys, is coming out on University of Hell Press in early 2018.
Calvero currently lives in his parents’ basement with his two cats, Ralph and Matilda. That sentence is also the pick-up line he uses when he’s trying to score girls at bars, but, surprisingly, it never gets him any action whatsoever. Calvero is one feline away from becoming a crazy cat guy and if that isn’t bad enough he works with cats at a cat hospital, too. When he’s not writing or working he is more often than not eating Taco Bell, daydreaming about hunting ghosts, daydreaming about Taco Bell when he’s not eating Taco Bell, or screaming in frustration at whatever video game feeding his current addiction. He has been published in several online literary journals and thinks you should buy his book so he can finally move out of that basement.
Sarah Certa (aka Xerta) was born in Germany in 1987 and has since called many places home, none of them permanent. She is the author of the chapbooks JULIET (I) (H_NGM_N Books, 2014) and RED PAPER HEART (Zoo Cake Press, 2013). She received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Nikia Chaney is the current Inlandia Literary Laureate (2016-2018). She is the author of us mouth (forthcoming from University of Hell Press, 2018) and two chapbooks, Sis Fuss (2012, Orange Monkey Publishing) and ladies, please (2012, Dancing Girl Press). Nikia has won grants from the Barbara Demings Fund for Women, Poets & Writers, and Cave Canem.
Leah Noble Davidson has a curious kiddo and a bouncy Bernese Mountain Dog. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Poetic Scientifica is her first book of poetry; DOOR is her second. She’s busy busy busy and then busy still using all her free time to create.
Rory Douglas lives in Washington with his wife, dog, and son. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, and Monkeybicycle, among other publications.
Brian S. Ellis is a transplant to Portland, Oregon from his beloved Boston, Massachusetts. He was a part of the Boston Poetry Slam for six years and is co-founder of the internationally renowned yes-wave think-tank The Whitehaus Family Record. American Dust Revisited is his third book and Often Go Awry is his fourth.
Greg Gerding cut his teeth on the poetry scene in Washington, D.C. shortly after he began writing in 1994. He’s had seven books published since and still found the time to launch University of Hell Press in 2005. Greg was born in Kentucky, has lived and/or worked in nearly every city in America, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Gogo Germaine was born with a lollipop-swirl brain, goth-kitty heart, and lightning-bolt soul. She won the Spelling Bee and the D.A.R.E. essay contest in the 6th grade. She was voted “Most Unique” in the 7th grade. It was all downhill from there. The rest was the stuff of hysterical after-school specials: stealing cigs, shotgunning PBRs, snorting cocaine, sneaking punk boys into her pink bedroom, and listening to tinny car stereo tunes while glaring into the sun like a muscle-shirt dad. Gogo became a band publicist, music journalist, and writer devoted to exploring rebellion and the grey areas of life. She helped start what was rumored to be a sex cult in a haunted bordello in a ghost town, gave birth to two love children, and wrote such subversive things that she was estranged from half of her family and friends in a single year. Gogo currently spends her days working in a phantasmagorical wonderland. She wrote Glory Guitars for the singular goal of capturing the feeling of the air as she ran across a field ditching school, totally free from responsibility. It became a hopeful platform for her to reclaim her agency and make sense of all the heartbreak she was running from: the heartbreak of being a differently-wired girl in a predatory world. She is no longer a danger-seeking asshole.
Lauren Gilmore was born in Spokane, Washington on the autumnal equinox of 1996. Since then, she has written poems, stories, and love letters, some of which have been read and published by other people. Outdancing the Universe is her first book which also won a Literary Classics Award in 2015. She is now working toward translating the word butterfly into every language.
Rob Gray is a European artist currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. He was born in London, grew up in Karlsruhe, Germany, and studied Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently the program director at Full Life, a day program for adults with developmental disabilities, as well as a founding member of the Dimsummer Book Club, an independent publishing collective based in Portland. In his free time, Rob paints, writes, draws, makes music under the pseudonym Uncool, and organizes poetry and performance-based events. His work has been published by Tin House, Poor Claudia, Black Cake Records, Heavy Feather Review, Bone Tax Press, NAP, Ooligan Press, and many other fine publishers of contemporary literature.
Joseph Edwin Haeger is the author of Learn to Swim (University of Hell Press, 2015). His writing has appeared in The Pacific NW Inlander, The Spokesman-Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and others. He lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and sons.
Lindsey Kugler was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. She was a dedicated performer in high school with mock trial, policy debate, and speech events. This college dropout has never cared about school. She has worked and currently works exclusively for nonprofits—except for a short stint as an office assistant where she made more money than she ever had before and probably ever will again. In the spring of 2012 she graduated from Portland, Oregon’s Independent Publishing Resource Center certificate program in self-publishing. HERE. is her first book.
Shawn Levy is the international bestselling author of The Castle on Sunset, Paul Newman: A Life, Rat Pack Confidential, and six other books of biography and pop culture history. A former film critic for The Oregonian and KGW-TV, he has written for The New York Times, Interview, Sight and Sound, Variety, The Guardian, The Village Voice, The Black Rock Beacon, and many, many other publications. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of California, Irvine and serves on the board of Operation Pitch Invasion in Portland, Oregon, where he jumps and claps and sings for victory. (Please note that he is not the Shawn Levy who produces and directs Stranger Things, and, no, he doesn’t know how to contact him.) Visit THIS SHAWN LEVY at shawnlevy.com for more.
Wryly T. McCutchen is a ferociously genderqueer poet, blogger, and all around trouble maker. They love bikes and anything else with simple exposed mechanics. In 2013 Wryly was listed as a finalist in Write Bloody’s publishing competition and has had their poetry and nonfiction appear in Wilde Magazine, Alive With Vigor, and Raven Chronicles. Wryly currently runs a personal/political blog called Meet Me in the Margins and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from Antioch University. My Ugly & Other Love Snarls is Wryly’s first book.
Michael McLaughlin is a three-time $17,000 California Arts Council grant recipient, Michael McLaughlin has worked for 25 years as an Artist-in-Residence at Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security forensic facility, as a Contract Artist with the California Department of Corrections, with California Youth Authority, and as San Luis Obispo County Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools. A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Master of Professional Writing program and founding editor of its literary journal, The Southern California Anthology, McLaughlin has written two novels, Western People Show Their Faces and Gang of One, and two chapbooks of poetry, Ped Xing and The Upholstery of Heaven. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications. Originally from San Francisco, California, McLaughlin lives on California’s Central Coast with his brilliant and beautiful wife. Selected Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo County in 2003, McLaughlin runs the Central Coast’s Live from the CORE poetry/performance series and is an Artist in Residence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California.
Isobel O’Hare is a poet and essayist who has dual Irish and American citizenship. In addition to all this can be yours (University of Hell Press, 2018), they are the author of the chapbooks Wild Materials (Zoo Cake Press, 2015), The Garden Inside Her (Ladybox Books, 2016), and Heartbreak Machinery (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). O’Hare graduated summa cum laude from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., where they were awarded the Mary Boyle McCrory Award for Excellence in Writing. They went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. O’Hare has also been the recipient of awards from Split This Rock and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. O’Hare co-edits (with poet Carleen Tibbetts) the journal and small press Dream Pop.
A.M. O’Malley has been published in The Newer York, Nailed Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, Jerkpoet, Poor Claudia, The Burnside Review, Fog Machine, and The Portland Review. A.M.’s first full length book of hybrid poem-memoir Expecting Something Else was published on University of Hell Press in 2016.
Stephen M. Park is a longtime factotum and drifter who now wanders the quiet streets of a small, coastal town in Washington with a dog named Hobo. Good luck finding him.
Christine Rice spins amazing stories that have been published in Roanoke College’s Roanoke Review, American University of Beirut’s Rusted Radishes, Farleigh Dickinson University’s The Literary Review, and online at Chicago Literati and Bird’s Thumb. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Metro Times, The Good Men Project, The Urbaness.com, CellStories.net, F Magazine and her radio essays have been produced by WBEZ Chicago. Christine is the managing editor of Hypertext Magazine and the director of Hypertext Studio Writing Center. She also teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago and is the 2015 recipient of the Ragdale Rubin Fellowship. Learn more from Christine’s website.
Thomas Lucky Richards edited and published two magazines; The Portland Permanent Press & Neener Ploy. The PPP was co-edited and published with Joe Sacco. Tom has written for several Portland Publications including The Oregonian and Willamette Week. He was also the infamous Lucky writing the monthly Last First Thursday column for the Paperback Juke Box. Tom was writer-in-residence at Mother Foucault’s Bookshop and part of the Writers’ Collective. The story “The Arithmetic Islands” was previously published in Phenomenal Literature: A Global Journal Devoted to Language and Literature. He was published as part of Word & Hand II and The Writers’ Collective anthology. He was also Curator and Janitor at the world oldest museum: The Faux Museum in Portland, Oregon’s Old Town. Tom has two wonderful sons and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Sam Sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017), and winner of The National Poetry Series and James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets (as well as numerous other awards). This two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champ’s next book, Bury It, will be out on Wesleyan University Press in 2018. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Lambda Literary, and is the current poetry editor at BOAAT Press.
Liz Scott lives in Portland, Oregon where she is a clinical psychologist in private practice by day and a writer of both fiction and non-fiction.
Michael N. Thompson likes bacon, fantasy football, and Twin Peaks. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Word Riot, Toronto Quarterly, and San Pedro River Review. He is the author of four poetry collections including A Murder of Crows (University of Press). Michael’s newest project is his first novel, Postcards From An Assassin. Find more of his work on his website.
Ellyn Touchette was born in Portland, Maine & will probably never leave. Ellyn used wit, charm, & a cocktail of potent psychotropic medications to infiltrate her way into a damn good job at a psychiatric hospital. She finally got that biology degree, if you were wondering, & plans to specialize in genetic research of the neuro-atypical mind. She has been hosting, organizing, & performing poetry at her home venue, Port Veritas, since before she had object permanence (e.g., somewhere around the 9th grade). On very rare occasions, she may be observed to commit the dubious-at-best act of competitive slam poetry. An abbreviated yet character-defining list of Ellyn’s favorite things include: her little brother, push-ups, proving that she really does have all of the amino acids memorized, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Adderall, & those moments when you get to hold someone’s hand and say me too.
Ran Walker is the author of eighteen books. His short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi. Walker is a graduate of Morehouse College (BA in English), Pace University (MS in Publishing), and George Washington University Law School (JD). He also has a Certificate in Publishing from New York University and has done graduate work in English at Mississippi State University. Walker is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hampton University and lives in Virginia with his wife and much better half, Lauren, and his amazing little rockstar daughter, Zoë.
