In Short – Issue 4 (Winter 2026)

Helena Rho is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and the author of Stone Angels, a novel, and American Seoul, a memoir-in-essays. She is a devoted fan of K-dramas, Korean green tea, and the haenyeo of Jeju Island.

Lauren D. Woods is the author of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe, a short story collection that won the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the PEN Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collections. She lives and writes in Washington, DC.

Martha Petersen writes from the beautiful but prickly Sonoran desert in Tucson, Arizona. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Great River Review, Brevity, Salamander, Best American Essays 2020 Notable Essays, Witness, and others. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches creative writing at Pima Community College.

Andrew Careaga is a retired marketing and public relations practitioner whose fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction have appeared in The Argyle, Club Plum, Frazzled Lit, MoonLit Getaway, The Orange Rose, Roi Fainéant, Spillwords, and elsewhere. He lives in Rolla, Missouri, USA.

Kit Carlson is an Episcopal priest and a life-long writer with work recently published in River Teeth, EcoTheo Review, Beautiful Things, Bending Genres, and Burningword Literary Journal, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of Short Fictions and was recently named a finalist in Orison Books’ Best Spiritual Writing contest for 2025. Kit lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her husband Wendell, and Lola, a nervous rescue dog. Find her at kitcarlson.org.

Dana Pedersen is a facilitator and consultant based in Minnesota, who works to build the capacity of social justice organizations around the country. She is also a poet and writer working primarily in short forms and an avid salsa dancer.

Katie Schwarz is from Oakland, Califronia. She is currently writing a memoir about growing up with a chronic illness from childhood through adulthood, and a novel in which climate change meets economic change in late 90s Oakland. Her writing has been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Bold Italic, Had, and Brevity’s Special Issue on Disability.

Matt Meyer is an MFA student at Northwestern University, focusing on fiction and nonfiction. When he’s not writing, you can find him being a dog dad, old soul, and suffering from nerdosis.

Hillary Wentworth earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus, Black Warrior Review, The Fourth River, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among other journals. She lives and writes in southern Maine.

Tim Walker read, for pleasure, the complete novels of Charles Dickens while earning a BA in Environmental Studies, and the complete novels of Anthony Trollope while earning a PhD in Geological Sciences, and has worked as a computer programmer, healthcare data analyst, used book seller, and pet sitter. He lives largely in his own head, while he corporeally resides in Santa Barbara with his son Dana and their cat Cassiopeia. His essays and poems recently appeared in Harpy Hybrid Review, 3:AM, Fatal Flaw, Rock Salt Journal, TYPO, and Sneaker Wave.

Suzanne Hicks is a disabled writer living with multiple sclerosis. Her work appears in matchbook, Gooseberry Pie, Stanchion, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, and others. Her stories have been selected for Best Microfiction (‘24 and ‘25) and the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist (‘24 and ‘25). Read more at suzannehickswrites.com.

Lindsey Pharr writes from a little cabin in the woods outside of Asheville, NC. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from the Naslund-Mann School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. Her work has appeared in Brevity, SmokeLong Quarterly, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and elsewhere. For more, please visit her website at www.lindsey-pharr.com.

JR Fenn’s writing has appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, Split Lip, 100 Word Story, and more. She’s the winner of the 59th Annual New Millennium Award for Flash Fiction and The Masters Review Chapbook Open. Her chapbook, Tiny Vessels, is forthcoming in February 2026. More at www.jrfenn.com.

Jen Dary is a writer and leadership coach whose work explores the intersection of identity, belief, and personal transformation. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, sons, one dog and one cat. Her debut book, I Believe in Everything: A Memoir of Illness, Motherhood, and Magic, was published in January 2026.

Kevin Stonness writes flash fiction and micro nonfiction steeped in obsession, memory, and quiet unease. He lives in a Victorian house where stories gather in corners, brickwork, and shadow. His work has appeared in Flash Phantoms.

Kara Riggleman has always had a desire to learn more about the world that surrounds her. To keep up with the changes that happen each day, she decided to start photography at a young age. Kara first started with a camera that her mother gave to her when she was young. Her interest of wanting to capture life started. From there her interest in photography grew, and so did her passion for wanting to create something that was meaningful to not only her, but maybe someday, to somebody else.

KJ Hannah Greenberg tilts at social ills and encourages personal evolutions via poetry, prose, and visual art. Her images have appeared as interior art in many places, including Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Les Femmes Folles, Mused, Piker Press, Stone Lake Gallery, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, and Yellow Mama and as cover art in many places, including Angime, Black Petals, Five on the Fifth, Impspired [sic], Pithead Chapel, Red Flag Poetry, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Broken City, and Torah Tidbits. Additionally, some of her digital paintings accompany her poetry in Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Katherine Matsubara is a British artist & illustrator living in Tokyo with her husband, and hedgehog. She graduated with a degree in illustration before moving abroad, and now spends her time freelance illustrating, and painting for exhibition.

Jaina Cipriano is an experiential designer, filmmaker, and photographer who constructs immersive worlds to interrogate the narratives that shape identity. Raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult, she uses handcrafted environments, cinematic photography, and self-portraiture to examine religious and romantic entrapment, memory, and the fragile architecture of belief. Her work transforms personal history into participatory experiences that invite viewers to confront their own inherited stories and reconsider what feels possible. A Boston Fellow of the MassArt Creative Business Incubator and a finalist in EforAll Merrimack Valley, Jaina has been recognized among the top 200 in Critical Mass. Her award-winning short film Trauma Bond received the grand prize at the Lonely Seal International Film Festival. She is currently developing a touring, one-person immersive installation housed in a custom box truck, advancing her mission to create large-scale transformative art that blurs the boundary between audience and author.

Rachel Turney, Ed.D. (she/her) is an educator and artist located in Denver. Her poems, research articles, reviews, and drawings can be found in a variety of publications. Rachel is passionate about immigrant rights, teacher support, and empowering other artists. She is a Writers’ Hour prize winner and Best of the Net nominee. Her photography appears on a few magazine covers. Rachel runs the popular online reading series Poetry (in Brief). She is on staff at Bare Back Magazine with her monthly column Friday Night in the Suburbs. She reads for The Los Angeles Review. Website: turneytalks.com Instagram: @turneytalks Bluesky: rachelturney