CONTRIBUTORS PAUL DAVID ADKINS grew up in Florida and lives in New York. BEENISH AKHTAR is a 25-year-old senior at George Mason University majoring in graphic design. She was born in Louisiana, raised in the DMV area, and her inspiration comes from all the people that she’s been honored to interact with throughout her life. ZAHRA AMIRABADI was born in 1982 in Tehran, Iran. She entered art school in 9th grade and started her academic studies in illustration and painting following her passion for art, at which time she experienced a variety of media from darkroom analog photography and silk-screen printing to wood carving and leather art. Zahra finished her associate degree in visual communication followed by a B.F.A in graphic design, and while working as a graphic designer for numerous companies, had a chance to exhibit a number of her sculptures, photographs and self-portraits before coming to the United States in the fall of 2009. JENNIFER ATKINSON is the author of three collections of poetry, The Dogwood Tree, which won the University of Alabama Poetry Prize, and The Drowned City, which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and, most recently, Drift Ice from Etruscan Press. Her individual poems and her nonfiction have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Poetry, Field, The Yale Review, The New England Review, Threepenny Review, Shenandoah, The Iowa Review, Image, Witness, and elsewhere. Both her poetry and her nonfiction have been honored with the Pushcart Prize. She received a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University, and an M.F.A. in poetry writing and an M.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She taught in Nepal and Japan, at the University of Iowa, and at Washington University before joining the faculty of George Mason. ANDY FOGLE is the author of four chapbooks, most recently The Neighborhood We Left, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Born in Norfolk, VA, and raised in Virginia Beach, he received his M.F.A from George Mason University, lives in Saratoga Springs, NY, teaches English at Bethlehem Central High School and Skidmore College, and is a doctoral student in Curriculum & Instruction at SUNY Albany. TODD FREDSON’s poetry and non-fiction appears or is forthcoming in journals such as 42 Opus, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Interim, Poetry International and West Branch. His collection, The Crucifix-Blocks, won the 2011 Patricia Bibby First Book Award. He lives with his partner So to Speak
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