Nina Boals

Graduate Student

• nboals@iu.edu

Nina Boals is a poet from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is currently the Editor in Chief and Creative Nonfiction Editor of Indiana Review. She received her B.A. in English and social welfare with a certificate in environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was poetry editor of The Madison Review. Her work has been nominated for a Puschart Prize in poetry, and it can be found or is forthcoming from Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.

Carolena Fernandez Brazfield

• cibrazfi@iu.edu

Carolena Fernandez Brazfield is a queer Latina poet who calls many places home, though she admittedly feels most homesick for Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2023, she received her BA in Professional and Creative Writing from Goucher College, where she was a Kratz Fellowship Recipient, studied as a Visiting Student at the University of Oxford, and served as Poetry Editor for Preface Literary Magazine. She writes mostly about about chronic illness, spiders killing their mates, the women she loves, and gossip.

Carlos Contreras

Graduate Student

• cafacont@iu.edu

Carlos Contreras is non-binary, Guatemalan, and an MFA candidate in fiction from Texas. They are the lead fiction editor of Alien Magazine and read prose for Chestnut Review. Their writing explores ideas of identity, helplessness, and how people and places transform over time. Their work lives at the intersection between the ordinary human condition and surreal, imaginative circumstances, heightening reality to show how absurd our lives already are. Their work can be found in The Lumiere Review, Complete Sentence, Passages North, and elsewhere. When not writing, Carlos is almost certainly in a movie theater. 

Genevieve De Gange

Graduate Student

• gdegange@iu.edu

Genevieve De Gange is an MFA fiction writer from Temecula, California. She earned her BA degree in Creative Writing and French Literature from The University of Chicago and won UChicago's 2021 Les Rivers Fellowship. Her work currently explores fragmentation, placelessness, and unfeminine, pre-feminine, and reimagined female realities. 

Diego Díaz

Graduate Student

• dndiaz@iu.edu

Diego Díaz is a fiction writer from San Antonio, Texas. He received a B.A. In English with a certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023, where he was a recipient of the Roy Crane Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Literary Arts in 2021, and served as the fiction editor for Hothouse, the department's undergraduate literary journal. Díaz's writing is very much focused on his understanding of his homes and the people that inhabit them in South Texas, as well as his relationship to the South as a diverse and complicated region.

Ezra Fox

Graduate Student

• ezraxfox@iu.edu

Ezra Fox is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry. In their writing, Ezra is curious about “impermanence,” and “non-duality,” specifically, how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. Ezra’s poems are in or forthcoming in Poiesis, Glassworks Magazine, Sagebrush Review, Slipstream Press, and elsewhere. Apart from writing, Ezra is in the daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: doing cartwheels, jumping rope, and sharing tea with the beloveds they have been lucky enough to come to know.

Kourtney Jones

Graduate Student

• joneskou@iu.edu

Kourtney Jones is a poet and artist from Fort Wayne, Indiana. They graduated from Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne in 2015 with a B.A. in Linguistics, a minor in Women’s Studies, and a Teaching English as a Second Language certificate. Kourtney has taught English both in and outside of the States. She can be found typing in public spaces from a typewriter with her performance poetry project known as The Poem Market. Kourtney is the author of the poetry chapbook The Mug Drops. Her current work explores the intersections of languages and dreams, the transmission between the dead and the living, and poetry as a practice for collective liberation.

William D. Landau

Graduate Student

• rebeland@iu.edu

William D. Landau is an MFA student in poetry from Berkeley, California. They received their BA in Gender Studies from Columbia University. Their work has appeared in Diabolical Plots, Sinister Wisdom, and Hanging Loose Press. Their work touches on topics including gender, magic, the Anthropocene, Judaism, and bacon. In their free time they enjoy baking, swimming, reading, and attending to their cats' every whim. 

Roey Leonardi

Graduate Student

• roeyleon@iu.edu

Roey Leonardi is a poet and writer from Charleston, South Carolina. She earned her BA in English from Harvard College, and her work has appeared in Pleiades, Bat City Review, online in The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She enjoys writing about motherhood, the American South, and origin — the people and places from which we come and to which we inevitably return.

Angela Lim

Graduate Student

• limang@iu.edu

Angela Lim is an MFA candidate in poetry. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2019 with degrees in English and Neuroscience & Behavior. Originally from Columbia, Missouri, she worked in publishing in the Twin Cities area as an editor and writer for juvenile nonfiction books. Her recent poems have played with the flow of time or focused on the transitional space between voice and being. 

Monica McDonough

Graduate Student

• monimcdo@iu.edu

Monica McDonough is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction from Rocky River, Ohio. She earned her B.A. in English and a Certificate in Journalism from Yale University. Her writing explores topics including the Midwest, belonging, religion, childhood, and what it means to grow up. Monica’s humor writing appears in The New Yorker. In her free time, she devours pop culture, calls her mom, and tells her what the kids are listening to.

Cheyenne McGuire

Graduate Student

• cheymcgu@iu.edu

Cheyenne McGuire is a poet from rural Colorado. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Her work centers around landscape and celebrates how sound interacts with itself; she strives to make poems that snag, almost, at the truth through echoes, iambs, and endless repetitions. She is currently working on a series of love sonnets that explore how the edges of one self can merge and shape the edges of another. Her work can be found at Amethyst Review, Body Odyssey: An Anthology, and on the corners of napkins and diary entries.

Kenny Mitchell

Graduate Student

• kemitc@iu.edu

Kenny Mitchell is a fiction writer and poet from Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in Language Arts Education from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. In his work, he seeks to challenge his childhood norms through his characters' development, often using absurdist and magical realist lenses to generate questions that don't necessarily need answers.Kenny is the first to admit he is often confusing, unapologetically so. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Do Geese See God? His work appears in HAD, The Good Life Review, The Airgonaut, JAKE, and The Gorko Gazette. In his free time, he's still trying to figure out where Waldo is.

Al Neal

Graduate Student

Al Neal is an MFA candidate in fiction from Bloomington, Indiana. They earned their B.A. in English and Media at Indiana University. During their undergraduate studies they served as arts council chair for the Collins Living Learning Center, co-editor for Collins’ weekly art and writing zine the Collins Columns, and editorial intern for Victorian Studies. Their writing explores non-binary lesbian identity, coming of age, mental illness, and repressed Midwestern families. They are a collage artist, DIY publications enthusiast, and 1970s/80s sitcoms and cult cinema fan. 

Tyler Patton

Graduate Student

• typatt@iu.edu

Tyler Patton is a writer from Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 2012 and then lived in San Francisco for ten years. His work explores the insufficiencies of identity and identity politics. You'll probably see him biking around town.

Danielle Richardson

Graduate Student

• dansrich@iu.edu

Danielle Richardson is an MFA candidate in Fiction at IU Bloomington. She was born and raised in the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin and earned her BA in English (Creative Writing) with a minor in Film Studies from Florida State University. Her writing typically uses magical realism to explore matriarchy and Black girlhood.

Mollika Jai Singh

Graduate Student

• mjsingh@iu.edu

Mollika Jai Singh is an MFA candidate in poetry from San Diego, California and Montgomery County, Maryland. They write prose poetry, slam poetry, and formal poetry, with an inclination toward golden shovels, abecedarians, and sestinas, with a desire to commit to a few words and write between the lines. Mollika completed her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies at Princeton University, where she wrote for The Nassau Weekly, served as managing editor for The Nassau Literary Review, and co-founded Positions, an Asian/American zine. She also received the Outstanding Work by a Junior in Creative Writing award. Mollika's undergraduate thesis was a poetic and critical exploration of family abolition and critical auntie studies. They study the (self-)representation of people of color in popular culture, gendered and racial performance, beauty standards, care work, and love and desire across differences.

Teja Sudhakar

Graduate Student

• tsudhak@iu.edu

Teja Sudhakar is an MFA candidate in Poetry. A native of Chennai, India, and long-time resident of Lexington, Kentucky, their work explores queer and immigrant narratives of the transnational South. Teja’s work has been published or is forthcoming with FRONTIER Poetry, Academy of American Poets, The Georgia Review, Salt Hill Journal, and others. They have received fellowships from Tin House and The Kenyon Review. When they’re not writing, Teja is hanging out with their cat, Soup.

Santiago Valencia

Graduate Student

• svalenc@iu.edu

Santiago Valencia is a Mexican poet, editor, and spiritual worker. They received a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Reed College, where their poetry was recognized by the Academy of American Poets. Their work develops a poetics of ritual and gnosis to explore queer embodiment, fractured ancestries, faith and mysticism, soul loss and retrieval, dreams, and death. They believe language is an alchemical tool for connecting with the sacred all around and within us, and for recovering lost enchantment. A Tin House Workshop and SAFTA alum, Santi is an Editor-at-Large for Nightboat Books. 

Cindy Yu

Graduate Student

• yuci@iu.edu

Cindy Yu is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction. She was born and raised in Texas but has spent most of her adult life on the west coast. She studied computer science, earth systems, and creative writing at Stanford University. In her stories, she is drawn to topics related to family, class, and alternative ways of knowing. In her free time, she enjoys visiting urban green spaces and spending time with her dog Maya.