Fatima Jamal Alharthi is pursuing her Ph.D. in Fiction. She received her master's degree from the University of Sydney in 2012, and earned her B.A. in English from Taibah University, Saudi Arabia in 2008. Her fiction can be found on Smokelong Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Flyleaf Journal, Garfield Lake Review and Santa Ana River Review, among others.

Ifeoluwa Ayandele is from Tede, Nigeria. He is an M.F.A. candidate in Poetry and he has received an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. His poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net.  His work is published or forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Another Chicago Magazine, West Trade Review, The South Carolina Review, Moon City Review, The McNeese Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Rattle, Verse Daily and elsewhere. He presently lives in Tallahassee, Florida. 

Carrel Barber is a second-year M.F.A. student studying Fiction. His work has appeared in Big Bend Literary Magazine, Poetica, and The Good Life Review. 

Laura Biagi is a Ph.D. candidate in Fiction. Her work has been published in TriQuarterly and Anthropology & Humanism, and her chapbook The Fair Day published from ELJ Editions in 2024. She is the recipient of a Phi Kappa Phi dissertation grant and a Kentucky Emerging Artist Award, has served as Editor-in-Chief of FSU’s graduate-run literary magazine Southeast Review, and is a former literary agent of New York Times bestselling titles.

Oliver Brooks is a second-year M.F.A. student in Poetry. A lifelong Floridian, he holds a B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Florida State University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Honey Literary, Cream City Review, 3Elements Literary Review, Full House Literary, Boudin (The McNeese Review), and elsewhere, and his nonfiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. He serves as Poetry Editor for the Southeast Review.

Helen Brower is pursuing her Ph.D. in Fiction. She graduated with a Distinction for her M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University of Belfast. She has been published in the Seamus Heaney Centre’s Blackbird Literary Anthology. Her pilot script was shortlisted for BBC's 2024 Writer's Open Call, the Barnstorm Fest 2023 and a semi-finalist in TSL Free Screenplay Contest in 2023, as well as a finalist for 2025 BBC Belfast Voices. She grew up in Central California on a dairy farm. She wants to create films in genres where there isn’t a lot of female representation at the writing stage. Her stories aim to twist stereotypes of who gets to be the hero. She tries to emulate this in all her writing.

Emily Clemente is a third-year M.F.A. candidate in fiction. She graduated with Highest Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in English & Comparative Literature and Honors in Creative Writing, earning the 2022 Max Steele Award in Fiction for her senior thesis. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her writing has been featured in december, Jellyfish Review, Every Day Fiction, and Deep South Magazine, among others. You can find more of her work at emilyclemente.com.

Sarah Destin is a Ph.D. candidate in Fiction. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Washington and her B.A. from Hamilton College. Her work has recently appeared in Bennington Review, Mid-American Review, The Pinch, and other journals. She is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Gemma English is a first-year M.F.A. student in Fiction. She graduated from Columbia University in 2019 with a degree in Creative Writing. In her work, she is interested in exploring the intersect between genre and literary fiction.

Adachioma Ezeano is a writer and screenwriter who co-wrote the TV series, Agoodjie, for Canal+ and StudioCanal. She is a 2021 O. Henry Prize recipient and a 2023 Best of the Net winner. Her short story, published in Granta, was Granta’s top fiction piece of 2022. Her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, The Best Short Stories, The Mcsweeney’s Anthology of Contemporary Literature, and Guernica, amongst others. Currently a reader for the O. Henry Stories, and a third-year Ph.D. candidate, her short stories have been translated into Italian and Bengali.

Camille Louise Goering is a French-American multi-genre writer and former public school teacher pursuing an M.F.A. in Non-Fiction writing. Her work has appeared in such publications as Big Easy Magazine, Sixfold, Decaf Magazine, Strange Horizons, and more.  She holds a bachelor's degree in International Relations from Pomona College and a Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins University. Previously, she worked as an AP Language and Composition teacher in the 9th Ward of New Orleans and as a community organizer in her hometown of Manhattan. She enjoys music, flow arts, nature, painting, and learning new things. 

Nicholas Goodly earned their M.F.A. from Columbia University. Their chapbook Black Swim won the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. They were runner-up for the 2019 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2020 Jake Adam York Prize. Goodly is writing editor of WUSSY. They live in Atlanta.

Samuel Granoff is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in Fiction, holding degrees from Columbia University, Duke University, and the University of San Francisco (the latter two at which he played baseball). Last spring, he taught abroad with Semester at Sea, covering 10 countries in one hundred days, leading courses on global fiction and directing their Writing Center. Currently, he's a Fulbright Fellow through the Université Paris-Saclay, researching for a novel set during the First World War.

Ian Hall is pursuing a Ph.D. in poetry. He was born and reared in Eastern Kentucky. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and elsewhere.

Maisha Hossain is from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and she is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing-Fiction. Maisha completed her M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2018. Her writing has appeared or forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, QUB’s Blackbird Anthology of 2018, Panjeree Publications, Poet’s Choice, The Offending Adam, and NPR’s Freshly Picked Prose. Her interest lies in postcolonial literature, South Asian studies, and women’s writing. As a part of her dissertation, she is working on a collection of short stories on Bangladeshi women, for which she was awarded the Adam M. Johnson Fellowship Award 2023 by FSU’s English department.

Stephen Hundley is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2023) and Bomb Island (Hub City Press, 2024). His stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cream City Review, Carve, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He holds an M.A. from Clemson, an M.F.A. from the University of Mississippi, and is currently completing a Ph.D. He is writing a book about the feral horses of Cumberland Island.

Ryan Hunke is pursuing his Ph.D. in Fiction. His background includes a decade as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Army, which influences his science fiction writing as an outlet to contextualize his experiences. Ryan explores themes at the intersection of technology, society, and human experience. He has multiple works published in Analog magazine. An associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), Ryan is passionate about supporting writing communities.

Alex Jaros received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago in 2015, where he was a Follett Fellowship recipient. He earned his B.A. in English from the University of Missouri in 2011. His work can be found in Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, Bird’s Thumb, Ghost Proposal, LDOC, Goreyesque, and Epic. He hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing.

Jade Jemison is a Creative Writing (Nonfiction) Ph.D. student. She’s a Mcknight Doctoral Fellow and has won the KeyWest Literary Seminar - Teachers and Librarians scholarship, the Hippocampus Nonfiction Conference - Writers of Color scholarship, and more. Jade received her M.F.A. from the University of South Florida. She is originally from Missouri but has lived in Florida for 10 years. Her work examines the impact of representations of Black literary familial relationships on societal norms, expectations, and child-rearing. Her writing covers themes of motherhood and identity and has appeared in Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Mineral Literary Magazine, and Prenumbra.

Blake Johnson is a first-year M.F.A. student studying fiction. His work has appeared in Story Magazine, Moon City Review, and others.

Caroline Laganas earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a B.A. in Journalism from Pepperdine University. She was a finalist for the Mississippi Review Prize and an International Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in Five Points, Mississippi Review, Atlanta Review, New Orleans Review, Poetry East, Mantis, and others. She is currently writing and illustrating her first book while pursuing a Ph.D. in Poetry.

Haley Laningham is a poet from Fresno, California. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. 

Max Lasky is a poet from New Jersey, pursuing a PhD in creative writing. His poems have been published by Frontier Poetry and are forthcoming from Painted Bride Quarterly. He is the co-founder of the literary magazine Leavings (leavingslitmag.com). He earned a B.A. from Ramapo College and an MFA from the University of Maryland.

Hikari (Soup) Leilani Miya (she/they) is a third-year Japanese Filipina Ph.D. student concentrating on animals and nonhumans in ecology and poetry. She graduated from Cornell University and University of San Francisco. She has certifications in herpetology from Amphibian Foundation, where she currently is on the board of communications, and is co-President of FSU's Association of Herpetologists and Entomologists. They are an animal care specialist working/volunteering at North Florida Wildlife Center and Tallahassee Museum and hardcore Pokémon Go trainer and retired musician and healthcare worker. Her first book of poems, Do Not Feed the Animal (2024) sold out at Kansas City AWP.

Melvin Li is a Ph.D. candidate in Fiction and Legacy Fellow at Florida State University. He earned his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, where his work received the David Relin Prize in Fiction. His work has appeared in AGNI. He is from Long Island, New York.  

Brandi Nicole Martin’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Missouri Review, the Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Bennington Review, Crazyhorse, Redivider, and At Length, among others. She is pursuing her PhD in poetry at Florida State University.

Larissa Martins is a Queer Brazilian writer, born and raised in South Florida. She is a first-year M.F.A. Creative Writing student specializing in Poetry. She previously earned her B.A. in English at FSU. Her poetry explores themes of cultural heritage, generational trauma, and the deconstruction of religion and gender norms. She is the Communications Assistant at the Learning Systems Institute at FSU, where she interviews faculty and writes articles about their work in International Development and Education.

Qiang Meng is a first-year Ph.D. student from Changchun, China, and writes poetry in English as a second language. His poems have been translated into Mandarin, Portuguese and appeared in Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, Electric Literature, among others. 

Olga Mexina is a third-year Ph.D. student and Interviews Editor for Southeast Review. Her work has been chosen for the Editors' Final Round Picks for the Plentitudes Poetry Prize. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with her daughter Elsa and son Huckleberry.

Hera Naguib is a Ph.D. candidate in Poetry and holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Poets.org, The Common, World Literature Today, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, among others. Raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Toronto, Canada, Hera hails from Lahore, Pakistan. Find her online at heranaguib.com.

Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Gwen Niekamp (she/her/hers) is pursuing her Ph.D. in Creative Writing-Nonfiction. An alumna of Vassar College, Gwen received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2019. Upon graduation, she was awarded a Senior Teaching Fellowship to facilitate advanced creative nonfiction workshops and a graduate-level teaching seminar. Gwen’s writing has appeared in Boulevard, Belt Magazine’s Louisville Anthology, Essay Daily, Hippocampus, and Hobart Pulp.

Hayden Nielander is a poet from the Florida Heartland pursuing an M.F.A. in Poetry. He earned a B.A. in English from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Catapult, and Guernica. She is a 2021 recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. She is currently a first-year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing-Fiction. Home for her is Lagos, Nigeria.

Vince is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow (Creative Writing). He holds an M.F.A. from the University of Kansas, where he worked in the History of Black Writing (HBW) research center. He is winner of the 2024 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize (Michigan Quarterly Review) and the Margaret Walker Memorial Prize in Fiction (College Language Association). He is a Hurston/Wright Fellow, a Kimbilio Fellow, Longleaf Scholar, and co-founder of SoulClap: A Black Joy Journal. His short story “Mine Own” will appear in Virgin Islands Noir (Akashic, 2025).

Forrest Rapier is a first-year Ph.D. student in poetry. He has published poems in dozens of literary journals across the country, including Asheville Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and Greensboro Review. He has received scholarships and writing residences from Brevard College, Key West Literary Seminar, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the University of Virginia. His debut poetry collection, As the Den Burns, was published by Texas Review Press in 2022.

Renee Roberts is an M.F.A. student studying nonfiction. She received her B.A. at Hollins University in 2021. Her work transfigures fantasy, predominantly from folklore and fairy tales, into personal essays and memoir material. Her work has been published in Catfish Creek and The Closed Eye Open, among other publications.

Sarah E. Robinson is a Ph.D. student in Fiction. She has a B.A. in English and Studio Arts from the University of New Mexico and received her M.F.A. from the University of Houston. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Leavings and The Cincinnati Review.

River Selby graduated from the creative writing program at Syracuse University with an M.F.A. in Fiction. As an undergraduate, they studied English, film theory, and Hindi before graduating summa cum laude, with honors. They were the first in their family to graduate from college. Before pursuing their bachelor's degree, River worked as a wildland firefighter throughout the western United States for seven years. Currently, they are pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing-Nonfiction. River's work has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, The New Ohio Review, Vox, Boulevard, and Bitch (rip). Their narrative nonfiction book, Hotshot, is forthcoming in 2025, via Grove Press. 

Aimee Seu is the author of Velvet Hounds, winner of the 2020 Akron University Poetry Prize selected by Philip Metres. Nepenthe Radiant, her new chapbook, will be printed by Finishing Line Press summer 2025. She graduated in 2020 as a Poe/Faulkner Fellow from the University of Virginia Creative Writing M.F.A. Poetry Program,  where she was recipient of the 2019 Academy of American Poets Prize. Other awards she has received include the 2020 Los Angeles Review Poetry Award, the 2020 Henfield Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize at Temple University, the Temple University 2016 William Van Wert Award, and the Mills College Undergraduate Poetry Award. She was a finalist for the 2020 Black Warrior Poetry Prize judged by Paul Tran and a semifinalist in the 2019 New Guard Vol. IX Knightville Poetry Contest judged by Richard Blanco. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared or have forthcoming publications in Poets, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Los Angeles Review, Honey literary, BOAAT, Redivider, Raleigh Review, Diode, Minnesota Review, Blacklist, Adroit, Harpur Palate, Philadelphia Stories, Runestone Magazine, etc. 

Olivia Sokolowski is from Peachtree City, Georgia, and earned her M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Her work has been featured in The Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Prelude, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere. You can find Olivia online at oliviasoko.com.

Daniel Sutter is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction and holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, The Mississippi Review, The Carolina Quarterly, BOOTH, Fugue, and elsewhere, and has been named a finalist for the Iowa Review Fiction Award, the Robert and Adele Schiff Award in Prose, and others. He’s from Tampa, Florida.

Abigale Tabor is pursuing her M.F.A. in Poetry. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Arkansas International, Pornstar Martini Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Creation Magazine, and more. When not writing, she enjoys reading Matthias Svalina and Arthur Sze, or playing with her rescue dog, Sherlock. 

Fernanda Coutinho Teixeira is a first-year PhD candidate in the Fiction track, a writer who deals in the fantastical, the scary, and the weird. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she is a Brazilian writer exploring themes of change, transformation, the reasons we leave and the reasons we stay. She earned her M.F.A. in Fiction from University of Central Florida. Her work has been featured in Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan, and The Deadlands. You can find her at fernandacoutinhoteixeira.com and on Instagram, @fercoutinhotex.

Gabrielle Tribou is a first-year M.F.A. student in fiction. Her work has appeared in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, The Lindenwood Review, High Shelf Press, and other journals. She is the recipient of a John Mackay Shaw Undergraduate Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Literati Award in Undergraduate Fiction, and a Spotlight Award in Undergraduate Fiction, chosen by Pam Houston. 

Heather Truett holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Memphis, where she served as managing editor for The Pinch. Her first novel, Kiss and Repeat, was released by Macmillan in 2021. She has work published or forthcoming in Sweet Lit, Hunger Mountain, the Inflectionist, Grain, Utopia Science Fiction, Spoon Knife, and Salt Hill Review. Her poem in Whale Road Review was nominated for a Pushcart in 2023.

Ikechukwu Roy Udeh-Ubaka is a fiction Ph.D. candidate, with an M.F.A. from the University of Florida. His work has won both the Gerald Kraak Award and the Masters Review Award, and has appeared or been anthologized in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Wasafiri, Lolwe, Bakwa Magazine, The Gerald Kraak Anthology, 14: The Inward Gaze, and the Masters Review Anthology XI, amongst others. He is also a finalist for the Sisters in Crime Pride Award, the Globe Soup Short Story Award, and the Awele Creative Trust Award, and was profiled in Electric Literature as "One of the Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction." He has studied creative writing under the tutelage of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Leavitt, Dave Eggers, Tash Aw, Camille Bordas and Uwem Akpan. His novel-in-progress and short story collection are currently being preempted by a few publishers.

Sophia Alise Upshaw is an M.F.A. student studying Poetry. She graduated from Florida State University in 2023 with a B.S. in Media Communication Studies-Creative Writing, earning recognition as an Outstanding Student Scholar. Her poetry has been published in oddball magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Mistake House, and elsewhere. 

Isaac Vaught is currently a third-year student in the M.F.A. program. He is originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, and earned his B.A. in psychology from Stanford University. His thesis is a novel about a dying father who goes on a road trip with his estranged son.

Chris Watkins is a poet and Ph.D. candidate writing in and about the swamplands, rivers, and other watersheds of North Florida, as well as all things drag. Their poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Foundry, and Bosque among other journals.

Cassidy M. Wells graduated with honors from Loyola University New Orleans with a B.A. in Criminology & Justice and graduated with her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She’s a 2024 Hurston Wrights Fellow and the nonfiction editor at The New Orleans Review. As a New Orleans native, Wells seeks to fill the gaps of literature about her home in the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast that has notably erased the Black identity and experience by blending the roles of speculative, and literary fiction in her stories.

Hugh Wilhelm is a Ph.D. student in Poetry. He earned a B.A. in English from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in poetry from Syracuse University. He recently had a poem published in The Progressive.

Miranda Wonder is a second-year Ph.D. student in Fiction. She completed her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. 

Li Zhuang is a Chinese international student pursuing her Ph.D. in Fiction. In 2019, Li graduated with an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her works have been featured and are forthcoming in The Common, Denver Quarterly, Madison Review, Worcester Review, the Collapsar etc. Li is working on a novel about gender-nonconforming performers competing in a C-pop idol-making reality show.