Corey Mertes received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Film and Television Production from the University of Southern California. His short stories have appeared in many journals, including American Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, 2 Bridges Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Nassau Review, The Prague Revue, Marathon Literary Review, Green Briar Review, and West Trade Review, and have been shortlisted for the American Fiction Short Story Award, the Tartts Fiction Award and the Hudson Prize. His debut short story collection, titled Self-Defense, was released by Cornerstone Press in February 2023 as part of its Legacy Series.
Lynne Jensen Lampe was born in Newfoundland and raised mostly in Louisiana. Themes of conformity, sanity, gender, and faith find their way into her work, including her debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022), a 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award winner (honorable mention for poetry, grand prize shortlist). Her poems appear in many journals, including Stone Circle Review, The Inflectionist Review, Many Nice Donkeys, THRUSH, and Figure 1. A finalist for the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, she edits academic books and journals in mid-Missouri, where she lives with her musician husband and two dogs—not one of them offers to play Bananagrams
Cameron Morse received an MFA from the University of Kansas City-Missouri and lived in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lily and three children. He was the author of ten collections of poetry and served as Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and a reader at Small Harbor Publishing. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His poems have been published in over 100 different magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, and South Dakota Review.
