ISSUE ONE, December 2015:

Diamond Lil was an Atlanta drag legend, performing throughout the Southeast since the 1960s. She released several albums, including Diamond Lil Sings and The Queen of Diamonds.

Grant Jerkins is the author of four novels – Abnormal Man, The Ninth Step, At the End of the Road and A Very Simple Crime. His short fiction has been featured in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Buffalo Almanack, Out of the Gutter Online, Shotgun Honey and Blight Digest.

Cory D. Byrom is a writer, storyteller and occasional comic originally from metro Atlanta. His writing can be seen at Huffington Post, Pitchfork, Stereogum, SheKnows and elsewhere across the web and print. He’s been seen on stage with a microphone at Risk!, Write Club Atlanta, Scene Missing and probably some others, as well as any podcasts associated with these shows. Just Google Cory Byrom podcast and you’ll see for yourself. He curated and hosted the live monthly storytelling show The Iceberg in Atlanta before burning out on that mess. He now lives in Denver, Colo.

Sheronda Gipson is a freelance writer, blogger and social media professional who recently completed the MFA in Writing program at SCAD Atlanta. Her works have been seen in Written Magazine, SCAD’s Connector, Ivy Hall Review, Womenetics and the car review website, Speed Beautiful. She is an undefeated Write Club combatant, a Tough Mudder Finisher and Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

ISSUE TWO, June 2016:

Alayna Huft Tucker is the author of Thymebombe.com, as well as her self-published cookbook, The Japanese Pantry. Her work has been featured on WABE Atlanta Radio and appears online at The Five Hundred. She has performed for Write Club Atlanta, Bleux Stockings Society, and other Atlanta shows. When not writing she can be found painting with watercolors, taking pictures of bees, or at the playground with her daughter.

Laura Carter lives in Atlanta, where she teaches and writes for money and for pleasure. She has been writer-in-residence at WonderRoot recently, and her latest chapbook is out from WonderRoot/Loose Change in 2016. Many of her poems, reviews and interviews also appear in journals around the internet. You can follow her on Twitter. Her home is in Edgewood with her cats.

Myke Johns is a public radio producer in Atlanta, where he co-anchors Write Club, a live-lit series which kicks the ass of most any poetry reading you care to name. His work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Creative Loafing Atlanta, The Tusk, Used Gravitrons, Nately’s Magazine and the anthology Bare-Knuckled Lit.

Alex Ridgeway is a bookseller, writer and live-lit performer based in northeast Georgia.  He has performed at Carapace, Write Club and Stories on the Square. You can watch him most months reading with Atlanta’s own circus literati, Naked City (assuming, of course, that the pumpkin bucket is kind to him).

Parris Sarter is a South Carolina native who has made Atlanta her home for the last six years. She graduated for SCAD in Savannah with a M.A. in Performing Arts. Parris has worked in several productions throughout town some of her credits include Lake Bottom Prime (The Process Theater at Onstage Atlanta), Doubt (Out of Box Theater), Designing Women Live (Process), Hot Pink or Ready to Blow: A Totally 80’s Teen Sex Comedy (Weird Sisters Project) and The Revolutionists (7Stages). She hopes you enjoy My Momma’s Daddy and appreciates the continued support of live, local theater and the arts.

ISSUE THREE, February 2017:

Tricia Stearns writes true stories, essays on sustainable living, food and motherhood. Her work has been featured in Loose Change Magazine, Bloom, Georgia Gardening and Fayette Woman. She has performed onstage at Carapace, Stories on the Edge of Night, Tantrum and Listen to Your Mother.

Justin Barisich is a rising son of New Orleans, the half-Croatian middle child of a commercial fisherman, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, a freelancer, a satirist, a poet and a performer. Outside of his paid copywriting work, Justin has had his written poetry published in RATTLE, The Five Hundred, The Vanderbilt Review and other journals. He has also performed his own original spoken word poetry for thousands of folks all across the United States, in venues such as the Tennessee Performing Arts Center and the National Civil Rights Museum.

Aja Arnold is a native of Atlanta and a bartender. Her writing encompasses everyday antics in the service industry, the world of politics and the process of personal recovery in forms of creative nonfiction and op-ed. She will earn her BA in Journalism with a minor in Sociology from Georgia State University this fall.

Randy Osborne‘s work is listed in the Notables section of Best American Essays for 2015 and 2016. His writing has been published in four print anthologies and nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Best of the Net. It has appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, Full Grown People, The Lascaux Review, Flyleaf Journal, Story Club, Empty Mirror, Identity Theory, 3Elements Review, Bodega, SLAB, Lumina Journal, Loose Change, SunStruck, Green Mountains Review, Spry Literary Journal, Scene Missing and Thread, as well as the Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He lives in Atlanta and recently finished a book-length collection of essays.

Jyll Thomas has written for Paste Magazine, Intown Atlanta, The Five Hundred and Bibliographile.com. She has also performed at events in Atlanta such as The Dashboard Light, Stories on the Square, Smut Slam, WABE, Carapace and a special presentation by Carapace at 7 Stages Theater sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently working on a novel to be workshopped at the Iowa Writer’s Festival this summer.

Steven Williams is a College Park native living in Fairburn with his two dogs, Ozzy and Enzo. While managing the Oz and Enz, he also works as a massage therapist. He participated in Naked City: Circus Literati, through which he discovered Atlanta’s live literature scene, from March 2015 to its finale in July 2016. His work can also be found on The Five Hundred.

ISSUE FOUR, December 2017:

Jack Walsh is a writer, storyteller and Emmy Award-winning television producer in Decatur, Ga. His work has appeared in Creative Loafing, Nately’s, The Tusk and on WABE 90.1 FM. He has performed at The Moth, DragonCon, the Atlanta Science Festival, Fringe Festival Atlanta, and other such venues supportive of shenanigans and falderal. As Charlton Heston movies go, he prefers Touch of Evil and Planet of the Apes, but The Ten Commandments is not without its charms.

Kit Fay is an Atlanta-based carpenter/writer/stagehand/storyteller/butch lesbian biker who enjoys getting their hands dirty and being outside. They are forever grateful to Courtney Earl, Mary Lynn Singletary-Sinisi and their dog Myrtle for their endless support and encouragement.

Jon Goode is a poet and playwright who hails from Richmond, Virginia, and currently resides in Atlanta. He has been a featured performer on HBO’s Def Poetry, TVOne’s Verses & Flow, CNN’s Black in America and BET’s Lyric Café. His stage play Khalas was showcased in the 2013 International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2006, Jon’s work with Nick @ Nite earned him an Emmy nomination alongside the Promax Gold for best copyright North America. His debut collection of poems and short stories, Conduit, was published in 2015. The book spent 12 weeks as the #1 new title in African American Poetry on Amazon. Jon is currently the Atlanta host of The Moth StorySLAM and the co-host of the Beard and Curls podcast with Amenah Arman.

Alec Prevett is a senior undergraduate student at Georgia State University and the editor-in-chief of Underground Art & Literary Journal. He focuses on fiction writing, but he also enjoys writing poetry. Right now he’s here, but later he’ll probably be somewhere else, maybe.

Christina Schmitt is currently a graduate student at Emory University studying theology and ethics. She is passionate about the intersection of ecology, ethics, social justice and literature. She has recently been featured in Voices of Resistance: A Sister City Anthology.

Jon Carr has been a member of the Dad’s Garage Theatre cast for more than 10 years, working as an improviser, writer and Marketing Director. He is a a member of Dark Side of the Room, a frequent contributor to Write Club Atlanta and founder of United Atlanta Improv an organization that has helped improv theaters around the city come together through collaborative works. He has appeared in a number of Dad’s Garage shows such as: Cannibal! The Musical, Democracy Achieved, The Wrath of Con (which he co-wrote) and Effed Up Fairy Tales. ‘The Lisa Turtle Rule” was first developed and read at Scene Missing and is the basis for the play Black Nerd, which was produced at Dad’s Garage Theatre in July 2018.

ISSUE FIVE: August 2018

Junior Knox works as a communications professional for one of the largest transportation and redevelopment projects in Atlanta. Submerged in city planning nerdery, they spend their days managing social media accounts with tens of thousands of followers, as well as generating web content, writing press releases and coordinating media coverage for the ambitious program. Junior holds a Master’s of Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University and served as nonfiction editor for Loose Change Magazine from 2010 to 2014. Their work has been featured in Post Haste Quarterly and The Red Clay Review. Born in the frozen-in-time tundra of Buffalo, New York, Junior came to Atlanta in 2007 with wild stories of winter to share with their adopted Southern hometown.

Nicholas Goodly is a recipient of the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A Cave Canem Fellow, Nicholas received an MFA from Columbia University. Nicholas received the second place prize for New South Poetry Contest, was a semi-finalist in the 2018 Discovery/ Boston Review Contest, finalist in the 2017 Tennessee Williams Poetry Contest and a finalist in the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize. Nicholas is the writing editor of WUSSY Magazine.

E.M. Yeagley co-founded the live literature show Bleux Stockings Society and currently co-produces Scene and Song Missing. Fun Facts: E.M. completed her undergraduate degree in creative writing this year, at the tender age of 38. It felt really good. She is currently reading (and enjoying) Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, eats tortilla chips most days of the week, will surprise herself by crying at Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” every single time she hears it at the grocery store, and once did stand up at a Star Trek convention with mixed results. You can find her written work in Thrice Fiction Magazine, Here Comes Everyone and in the Atlanta-based Nately’s Magazine.

Dani Herd is a four-time Write Club Atlanta brawler, and two-time winner. Her essays have also been featured onstage and online with Scene Missing. She is a member of the acting company at the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, last appearing in July as Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She will next be seen as Lady Macbeth in October. Keep up to date with her nerdy, gushy ramblings at Hope Is The Thing With Lightsabers.

Nicholas Tecosky is a writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. He was one of the screenwriters of the horror omnibus V/H/S, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He is also the creator of the horror­comedy advice web series Ask Hatter & Hare. He hosts the philanthropic competitive reading series Write Club Atlanta, and is one of the editors of the Write Club-­based literary magazine Tender Bloodsport. Nick has lent his voice to over 150 audiobook titles, including Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell, which was included on the American Library Association’s 2013 “Listen List.” Recently, he became internet famous for meowing at his cat, which he often regrets.

Ian Campbell is Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. His primary research interest is Arabic-language science fiction: his monograph on the genre’s formative decades will come out in print this September from Palgrave Macmillan. Under the name Julian Cage, he also writes fast-paced, character-driven, trashy mystery-thriller fiction set in Atlanta; his collection of short stories Too Busy to Hate: Tales of Murder from the Streets of Atlanta is available on Amazon.

With a background in English and a deep love of literature, it was only natural that Sarah Shields found her way to a creative and wordy career. As a copywriter for a full-service marketing agency in Atlanta, Sarah uses her skills to tell stories. After all, every brand has a story just waiting to be discovered, and it’s her job to tell those stories in ways that connect people and spark conversations. Outside of work, Sarah loves reading, traveling, hiking the North Georgia mountains, drinking as much tea as possible, and exploring the Atlanta food scene.

A member of the Southern Order of Storytellers, Denise Mount delights in the telling of personal tales which include stories of growing up in Western New York, raising two daughters in Georgia, and hanging out these days with her Alabaman husband, Mike. Denise and Mike are co-founders of Stories on the Square – Gwinnett, a venue where are all welcome to tell, to listen, and to experience the joys of personal storytelling.

Benjamin Stevenson is a writer and dancer from Alabama. They attended Emory University, where they received their B.A in Political Science and Arabic. In addition to their primary studies, they maintained an active role in the Arts at Emory in both the Dance and Movement program as well as the Creative Writing program. Benjamin began centering their artistic goals on writing and movement, while living abroad in Casablanca, Morocco. Here they wrote a series of narrative prose based on interviews with queer youth in the region. Upon graduating with their bachelor’s, they began cultivating their creative writing and dance into performance as a means of facilitating insightful dialogue on topics such as mental health and identity politics. Their work often involves the incorporation of prose and poetry into their movement improvisation practice. Currently, they are freelancing written works in Atlanta and dancing for Staibdance Company.

ISSUE SIX: January 2019

Jessica Nettles was raised in a three-bedroom ranch home in Powder Springs, Georgia. No one would suspect that beneath her quiet suburban veneer lurks an imagination filled with creatures, magic, and general mayhem that come out in the form of stories. When she’s not writing stories, she teaches Learning Support English at Chattahoochee Technical College in Marietta, Georgia. She is a member of the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association, the Broadleaf Writers Association and is the volunteer coordinator for the Broadleaf Writer’s Conference. Along with her two black cats, Ninja and Luna, she resides in the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain. She has two adult children, Stuart and Maeve, who love her and her weird little stories. Her first novel will be released in April 2020 by Falstaff Books.

Mauree “Mo” Culberson is a writer, storyteller, and performer. She earned her degree in Theatrical Design and Technology and English from the University of Mississippi. Mauree has written for the Atlanta Fringe Festival, the Working Title Playwrights’ 24-Hour Play Festival and Emory University’s Brave New Works. She has shown her skills as a puppeteer, actor, comic and improviser in Atlanta.

Sarah Beth Nelson holds a Ph.D. from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, as well as a professional and fringe storyteller. Before returning to graduate school, Sarah Beth worked in public and elementary school libraries. Her (very patient) husband is a lawyer, so their two elementary age children are adept at both narrating their life dramas and arguing the case for more marshmallows. Sarah Beth conducted her dissertation research with Carapace, Atlanta’s open mic, personal storytelling show. You can learn more about her research here.

Lennie Gray Mowris, a magically disgruntled manifestor, is the founder of Lenspeace, an impact strategy and letterpress studio specializing in creating sustainable community and purpose-based brand development. She is also a founding design partner at Impactologie. As co-author of the Path to Impact, a methodology that guides creatives through a five-step process integrating social and environmental sustainability, Lennie uses design thinking facilitation to pivot complex human problems into positive outcomes. When Lennie isn’t manifesting her magic, she’s probably lost in the woods, soaking up sunshine, climbing on things, playing with words, pictures and prints or foraging for wild food.

Jordyn King is a poet based out of Atlanta who grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They started writing at the age of 14 when they began interrogating their gender and the intersection it shared with their Blackness. They studied Creative Writing and Sociology at Emory University before leaving school to become a starving artist. When they aren’t writing, they can often be found having an existential crisis and eating snacks.

Rykie Belles lives in Atlanta, where she has received many traffic tickets and lost two separate bouts on the Write Club Atlanta stage. In her other life she is a musician at renaissance festivals across the Southeast. Her first name rhymes with “sticky.” Find her on Twitter @withaykie.

ISSUE SEVEN: August 2019

Jeremy Maxwell attended the University of South Alabama where he studied under author James P. White. Some of his more recent work can be found online at Nately’s Magazine, and he can sometimes be found destroying people at Write Club Atlanta. He has been a mentor through The Wren’s Nest, teaching children the fundamentals of the short story. He now resides outside Atlanta with his beautiful wife, Reay Kaplan Maxwell, resident puppeteer at the Center for Puppetry Arts.

Shannon M. Turner is a professional storyteller and story coach, as well as a radio show host, writer, dreamer and nerd. She is the Founder/Creative Director of StoryMuse, which provides story strategies, independent consulting and coaching, and workshops to individuals, businesses, organizations, and communities seeking to use true, personal stories for transformative potential. Read more at StoryMuse.net.

Anthony Elmore is a writer and storyteller living the OTP life in Roswell, Georgia. He has frequently contributed spoken word audio pieces to Atlanta Fringe Audio and his written work has appeared in The Five Hundred. He has performed live lit at Write Club and Scene Missing. You’re welcome to follow his tweets at @aelmore.

Cat Taylor is best described as an amateur at both poetry and life. They are a member of the 2019 Art Amok Slam Team. Drawing on experience with mental illness and living as a nonbinary person, they use nature motifs and straightforward language to create things that hopefully resonate with readers and listeners.

E. Wilson Young is a storyteller, performer and writer. He has had short shorts published at Opium Magazine (”Dear God, It’s Your-Name-Here”), The Higgs Weldon, (”Comment Card for My Dealer”), and Defenestration Magazine (“Form Apology”).  He has performed at Carapace, Write Club Atlanta and Naked City.

ISSUE EIGHT: April 2020

Though she may be a Libra, Lena Kotler-Wallace learned long ago that balance is bullshit. Instead, you’ll find her swinging wildly between her collective passions: social media marketing (yes she makes those ads you see on Facebook), writing, and keeping the House of Chaos (otherwise known as her family of 5) at least comfortably functional. She’s been a long-time audience member in the Atlanta lit scene, and if you like what you read she hopes you’ll join her for more of her rants on living a #ActuallyAuthentic life at ChaoticFemme.com

Tawny Powell has two self published chapbooks, A Long Winters Baby and Breaking the Barge, available on www.tawnypowell.com. She holds a BA in Sociology from Assumption College and completed graduate coursework towards an MA in Sociology at North Carolina State University. She is a former Java Monkey Slam Champion and currently works as a Life + Wealth Coach, helping empower folks in their relationship with money and making different forms of investing accessible to all communities. Through her art she aims to speak about broader socio-political, economic, geographic, transcultural issues through her work while situating the self as an individual poet, recognizing and empathizing with the plights of others, in an attempt to link multitudes with common threads of experience, thought, being and emotion. When she’s not in the field, in the office, or with her face in a book – you can usually find her in her kitchen: curing something.

A recovered theater major, Liesel Sloan, has been a Labor and Delivery nurse for over 20 years who has previously performed her writing at Southern Bell Jar, Naked City, and Bleux Stockings Society. When not helping other women and their families through the birthing process, she is busy being “not a regular mom, but a cool mom” to her own two daughters and partner to the only man she would want to spend her social isolation with.

ISSUE NINE: June 2021

Vanessa Reid is a dark fiction writer and an English teacher in Atlanta. When she is not making her sixth-graders watch The Twilight Zone and read Poe, she writes speculative dark fiction about the human monsters that haunt us. Her story “Sonny Boy” was featured in Read by Dawn: Volume III. She is a member of the Broadleaf Writers Association and the Horror Writers Association, where she is the Atlanta chapter treasurer. Reid lives with her adorably macabre family, an evil cat named Moreland, and a dog who is just trying to avoid his wrath.

Jon Sokol is a writer, forester, traveler, and outdoorsman. He lives in Northeast Georgia with his wife, Karen. He mostly writes fiction often drifting toward southern gothic and his fascination with all things peculiar. Jon’s work has appeared in Cowboy Jamboree, Sanctuary and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and he has two stories that will be included in upcoming horror anthologies published by Springer Mountain Press and Alternating Current Press in 2021. In July, he will be graduating from Reinhardt University with an MFA in Creative Writing. Jon can be found online at www.jonsokol.com and @JonSokolWriter on Twitter.

Even though she majored in English at Florida State University, Maryann Lozano didn’t start writing until later in life. After spending many years noodling around with NaNoWriMo, books about writing, and writing prompts, she decided to get serious and enrolled in the Masters of Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University. She graduated with honors in December 2019. Maryann is an executive assistant at Guided by Good, a mid-sized advertising agency in Atlanta, and is also the director of the Handbell Choir at St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church. When she’s not assisting her bosses or waving her hands at her ringers, she is simultaneously revising her work-in-progress for the 1,000th time and trying to keep her cat off of the computer keyboard.