David Byron Queen was raised in Ohio. He has an MFA from the University of Montana, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow. He teaches with the Writing Workshops Dallas and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. His work has appeared in VICE, Paste, Split Lip, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Hobart, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. Having also lived in California, he now divides his time between New York and Montana.

Colin Winnette is the author of several books, including HAINTS STAY and USERS (forthcoming from Soft Skull in 2023). He is the former Managing Editor of PANK Magazine, and his writing has been published in numerous publications, including PLAYBOY, MCSWEENEY’S, ZYZZYVA, and GULF COAST REVIEW. Formerly a bookseller in Texas, New York, Vermont, and California, he is now a writer living in San Francisco.

Gwen Nicholson is a journalist and filmmaker from Missoula, Montana. Her work has been featured in the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Montana Press Monthly, and on Montana PBS. Gwen is an enrolled member of the Coeur d’Alene (Schitsu'umsh) Tribe. She can be found on Twitter (@nicholson_gf) and on Instagram (@nicholson.gif).

Mackenzie is a writer based in Los Angeles by way of New York and the suburbs of Chicago. Her essays and creative nonfiction can be found in Architectural Digest PRO, Hobart Pulp, X-RAY, Repeller, and Reed Magazine; her poetry collections Alms Basket for Your Heart (Variant) and Bento Box (Kelsay Books) were published in September 2020.

Franco Romero lives, writes and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife and two cats. He is working towards an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is the host of the literary podcast "Left The Hose On” and works as a manuscript editor for Ernesto Mayans, author of Haddock: A Painter’s Life. His writing has appeared in Neutral Spaces Magazine, Words & Sports Quarterly and Autofocus.

Hattie Jean Hayes is a writer and comedian, originally from a small town in Missouri, who now lives in New York. Her work has appeared in The Belletrist Magazine, Janus Literary, Hobart, The Puritan, and others. She has a poetry chapbook forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in 2023, and is working on her first novel.

Alex Higley is the author of Cardinal and Old Open. His novel True Failure will be published by Coffee House Press in 2024. Raised in Colorado, he lives in Illinois.

Matt Mitchell is a poet and music critic in Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of Grown Ocean (Word West, 2021) and The Neon Hollywood Cowboy (Big Lucks, 2021).

Kylie Westerlind was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana, in Missoula. Her stories have appeared in the Madison Review and Carve Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in Fearsome Critters and the Citron Review. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories set in the neon-desert wonderland of Nevada.

Karthik Sethuraman is an Indian-American living in California. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, AAWW, Fugue, Fairy Tale Review, and Berkeley Poetry Review, among others. One work, Saramakavi, was performed at the Asian Art Museum where he was a KSW writing fellow. His chapbook, Prayer under eyelids, is available from Nomadic Press.

Kyleigh McPhillips is a California girl for life. She received her BA in English Literature from San Francisco State University and wrote a small collection called Some Things Last a Long Time in 2021. Right now she calls Sacramento home and enjoys exploring local bands, walking to the neighborhood wine bars, and hiking.

Yunya Yang is a writer born and raised in Central China. She moved to the US when she was eighteen. She writes about experiences of being an immigrant, a person of color, and a woman. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Hobart, Split Lip Magazine, among others. She currently serves as an assistant editor for Barrelhouse. She lives in Chicago with her husband Chris and cat Ichiro (to whom she is but a tool to open faucets and doors.)

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Lauren Lavín is a writer, musician, and artist with work in Hobart, HAD, Jarnal Vol. 1 (Mason Jar Press), Sundog, The Hard Times: The First 40 Years (Mariner Books), Reductress, and elsewhere. She was an editor for The Hard Times, RipRap, and interactive fiction anthology Los Suelos, CA. She plays as dragonborn paladin Gnari on Diceland, and sings/screams in Fluppies. She was made in Mexico, born in Oakland, and lives in Seattle.

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, & neurodivergent writer from Sacramento, California. Their poems appear in Empty Mirror, Ghost City Review, & trampset, among others. They received their MFA from Mississippi University for Women & are presently a PhD student at Oklahoma State University. While not always (physically) there, they permanently reside in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Sawyer Elms was born and raised in the wild places of Arizona, and when he was young he played outside, didn’t wear clothes, and often snuck horse feed from his grandfather’s wheelbarrow. He received an MFA from UC Davis where he was awarded the Graduate Writers Prize in Nonfiction. Sawyer's writing, primarily nonfiction and memoir, focuses on themes of trauma, of masculinity, and of growing and dying in the wilderness of the American Southwest.

Robin Bissett is a writer, editor, and teaching artist from West Texas. She is an alumna of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program Summer Institute and a first-year fiction MFA candidate at the University of Montana, where she serves as the Online Managing Editor of CutBank.

M. Price is a writer and photographer from Richmond, Virginia living in Brooklyn with her cat, Babycat. She is a begrudging morning person, loves matinee movies, and prefers popsicles to ice cream; she feels most at home while traveling or driving long distances. You can find some of her written work in Contrary Magazine, Pidgeonholes, Rejection Letters, and Schuylkill Valley Journal.