Nate Brown’s stories have appeared in One Story, the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Five Chapters, Carolina Quarterly and elsewhere, and his essays, reviews, and features have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Rumpus, Electric Literature, Publisher’s Weekly, LitHub, and other publications.

He is editor-at-large of the award-winning literary journal American Short Fiction in Austin, TX, and has received fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and others. Currently, he is a senior lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University and is the 2024-25 Engaged Faculty Scholar of the Practice at JHU’s Center for Social Concern. He lives in Baltimore City with his wife, the poet Thea Brown, and two black cats, Steve and Count Dracula.

Rita Collins began life in Baltimore and then left, only to return fifty-five years later. During the hiatus, she lived in eight other states, two other countries and put on countless miles of travel. Teaching in public schools and universities was her primary profession which morphed into becoming the owner/operator of a traveling bookstore in 2015. St. Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore has set up all over the US at book festivals, brew pubs, schools, cafes, museums and county fairs. Collins is also a book artist making artist books and doing letterpress printing. She sees her work, her art, her travel and community involvement as attempts to create dialogue and build positive networks.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Michael Downs is the author of three books set in his hometown, including his debut novel, THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST (Acre Books, 2018). His other books include HOUSE OF GOOD HOPE: A PROMISE FOR A BROKEN CITY, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, and THE GREATEST SHOW (LSU Press, 2012), a story collection involving the famous Hartford circus fire.

With Jim Hock, Downs wrote HOLLYWOOD’S TEAM: GRIT, GLAMOUR AND THE 1950s LOS ANGELES RAMS (Rare Bird, 2016). He has won literary fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, and he has published stories in the Best American Mystery Stories series (2001, 2002).

Elizabeth Hazen is a poet and essayist. After teaching for twenty years, she changed tracks and now works at an independent bookstore. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Epoch, American Literary Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and other journals. She has published two collections of poetry, Chaos Theories (2016) and Girls Like Us (2020). She lives in Baltimore with her family.