Neal Pollack is the author of three books: the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Beneath the Axis of Evil, and the rock ’n’ roll novel Never Mind the Pollacks. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, GQ, and many other magazines, Pollack lives in Austin, Texas.
Jeffery Renard Allen is an Associate Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and an instructor in the graduate writing program at New School University. He is the author of two books, Harbors and Spirits, a collection of poems, and the novel Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction.
Jim Arndorfer was born and raised in Milwaukee. He now lives on the far North Side of Chicago—in broadcast range of the Packers Radio Network—with his wife and son. He has attended four Packers-Bears games and the teams have split. He is a reporter for Advertising Age and a contributor to The Baffler.
Todd Dills hails originally from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but desertion is sweet release: He has called Chicago his home for these past years. He is editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND, a broadsheet and online magazine (the2ndhand.com) for new writing. His stories, reviews, and erratta have appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Reader, where he also works.
Andrew Ervin grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and has lived in Budapest, Illinois, and Louisiana. His fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Fiction International, and the Southern Review, and his criticism has appeared in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, USA Today, and The Believer. Extraordinary Renditions is his first book.
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski was born and raised in Pilsen on the South Side of Chicago. He has published numerous stories in journals such as Triquarterly, Ploughshares, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. He still lives and works on the South Side of Chicago.
Luciano Guerriero is the author of one novel, a noir thriller entitled The Spin, and has been a resident of Brooklyn or Manhattan for twenty-three years. While writing plays, screenplays, short stories and poetry during that time, he has also acted in or directed sixty-five plays and acted in twenty Hollywood and independent films.
Kevin Guilfoile’s first novel, Cast of Shadows, was published this year by Knopf. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and son.
Adam Langer is the author of the novels Crossing California and The Washington Story. He divides his time between New York City and Bloomington, Indiana.
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and a finalist for the Story Prize. He is the editor of Chicago Noir: The Classics and the author of two short story collections and multiple novels including the best sellers Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails; Office Girl; and his latest novel, Marvel and a Wonder. He is a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Michael K. Meyers is a writer and performance artist. His fiction has been published in the New Yorker, and his performance work has been presented around the world, including at MoMA, Tel Aviv Museum, and Warsaw Institute of Contemporary Art. He teaches in the M.F.A. Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and lives in Evanston, Illinois. He is the recipient of numerous arts fellowships.
Achy Obejas is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ruins, Days of Awe, and three other books of fiction. She edited and translated (into English) the anthology Havana Noir, and has since translated Junot Diaz, Rita Indiana, Wendy Guerra, and many others. In 2014, she was awarded a USA Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation.
Bayo Ojikutu is the critically acclaimed author of the novels 47th Street Black and Free Burning. His work has won the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Great American Book Award. Ojikutu’s short work has appeared in various collections, magazines, and journals. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he has been recognized by the African American Arts Alliance for his contribution to literary fiction. Ojikutu and his family reside in Chicago.
Peter Orner is the author of two novels (Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo), two short story collections (Esther Stories and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge), and editor of two books of non-fiction/oral history (Underground America and Hope Deferred). He is co-host of a radio program on KWMR/ Point Reyes, CA called Casual Footsteps with John McCrea and co-owner of a bookstore called the Book Exchange.
Annie Holmes was born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. She has taught high school, run a book editing department, made documentaries and television, and led communications for feminist organizing and health research in the U.S. and UK. She now lives in London, but Zimbabwe is always home.
Brian Chikwava is a London-based Zimbabwean writer and author of the novel Harare North, which won the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category in Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Awards and was also longed listed for the George Orwell Prize. He is a previous winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a former Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Chikwava is currently working on his second novel.
Amy Sayre-Roberts lives in Springfield, Illinois with one beautiful husband and two talented Malamutes (both born in Chicago). Her work has appeared in the American Book Review and the Alchemist Review.
C.J. Sullivan lived in Brooklyn on the Ridgewood/ Bushwick border for seven years and loved the neighborhood. He has worked as a Court Clerk in Brooklyn Supreme since 1994. He has also been a freelance writer for the last ten years. Sullivan has a regular column in the New York Press called “The Bronx Stroll.” He now lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife Lisa and his twin daughters, Olivia and Luisa.
Claire Zulkey was born in Evanston, Illinois, and lives in Chicago. She has contributed to the Mississippi Review and Chicago Magazine, and published a book of literary humor titled Girls! Girls! Girls! More of her writing can be found on her website, Zulkey.com. Whatever crimes she has committed are not very interesting.
