Ellen Adams

Ellen Adams writes essays, fiction and songs. As a teenager in Eastern Washington, one of her earliest jobs included Spanish interpretation at a cardiology clinic. Ferrying the conditions of patients’ figurative and anatomical hearts between languages confirmed for her the urgent necessity—and, often, devastating absence—of language as a bridge. Linguistic fluency became pillar and propeller for her work, leading to years-long academic and artistic engagement overseas. She is revising a novel, as well as developing a nonfiction manuscript about the windfalls and collateral damages of adult language acquisition. A Lambda Literary Fellow and Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer in Nonfiction, her work appears in Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Singapore Art Museum, and elsewhere. As a singer-songwriter in Americana traditions, she has played in folk festivals and major cities throughout North America; she is at work on her next album. Adams is a former Fulbright grantee, researching politically engaged Thai contemporary art. Her current projects are supported by grants from Elizabeth George Foundation and Artist Trust. She completed her undergraduate studies in Comparative Literature at Princeton University and holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, where she received the Lainoff Prize.

www.ellenadams.net

Amanda Burr Xido

Amanda Burr Xido is a writer and film producer. A recent graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, she is at work on her novel The Dig and a collection of short stories. She is currently the creative producer and co-writer of "Sons of Detroit," a film mixing documentary, performance, and fiction, directed by Jeremy Xido. The two are also collaborating on a narrative film set in Detroit, currently in development. Other recent producing credits include the series FILMS BYKIDS for PBS, the documentaries "Death Metal Angola" and "Man Shot Dead," and the short doc/fiction hybrid "Solitary/Release." She was previously the creative director for the digital learning company Nomadic Learning, where she wrote, directed, and produced over 50 animated short films. She has also worked as an associate programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival, a consultant with the Screenwriters Colony, a programmer for the Chicago Humanities Festival, and as a theater director. She holds a BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. She was born in Nashville, raised in Florida, New Jersey, and Texas, and has spent time in over twenty countries on five continents. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Charlotte Crowe

Charlotte Crowe holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an MA in English from the University of Oxford, where she completed a dissertation on Virginia Woolf and Jane Ellen Harrison, the first female classicist and archaeologist in the UK. A 2017 Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction, she currently works at the Brooklyn Public Library and is writing her first novel.

Leigh Gallagher

Playing & Reality, a limited-edition print set featuring hybrid-text by Leigh Gallagher and paintings by Paul Wackers. Inspired by D.W. Winnicott's book of the same name.

Leigh Gallagher is a writer and educator. A graduate of the Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, her stories have appeared in numerous journals and collections. Recent publications include fictional responses to other art forms in an artist's catalogue, in a record insert, and in two limited-edition print collaborations. She currently lives in Los Angles, where she's at work on a novel about storytelling and power. 

www.helloleighgallagher.com

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her five award-winning books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough; and All the Agents & Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, Orion, and the Oxford American, and she edited Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010. Other distinctions include a Henry Luce Scholarship to China, a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton, and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Prize. Currently Associate Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed on five continents, in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department. One place she was thrilled to leave was Planet Cancer. She’s been in remission since December 2017. Visit her website at www.StephanieElizondoGriest.com.

www.StephanieElizondoGriest.com

Alexis Lathem

Alphabet of Bones, book cover.

Alexis Lathem is an environmental journalist and author of the poetry collection, Alphabet of Bones and two chapbooks. Currently a Black Earth Institute fellow, she is a recipient of the Chelsea Award for Poetry, a Vermont Arts Council grant, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. Her poems and essays have appeared in About Place, AWP Chronicle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea Review, Hunger Mountain, Gettysburg Review, Saranac Review, Spoon River Review, and other journals. She has reported extensively on Indigenous environmental movements, has worked as a staff writer and organizer in environmental and food justice organizations. She received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College, and teaches writing at the Community College of Vermont. She lives on a small homestead farm in Vermont. 

alexislathem.wordpress.com