Charles Richard Johnson is a scholar and the author of novels, short stories, screen-and-teleplays, and essays, most often with a philosophical orientation. Johnson has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Dreamer and Middle Passage. Johnson was born in 1948 in Evanston, Illinois, and spent most of his career at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Flash fiction, also called minimalist fiction, is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story ; the "dribble" ; the "drabble" ; "sudden fiction" ; "flash fiction" ; and "microstory".
The Kenyon Review is a literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, US, home of Kenyon College. The Review was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959. The Review has published early works by generations of important writers, including Robert Penn Warren, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Flannery O'Connor, Boris Pasternak, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Taylor, Dylan Thomas, Anthony Hecht, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, Derek Walcott, Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, Woody Allen, Louise Erdrich, William Empson, Linda Gregg, Mark Van Doren, Kenneth Burke, and Ha Jin.
John Edgar Wideman is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus on the African-American experience.
Tod Goldberg is an American author and journalist best known for his novels Gangster Nation (Counterpoint), Gangsterland (Counterpoint) and Living Dead Girl, the popular Burn Notice series (Penguin/NAL) and the short story collection The Low Desert: Gangster Stories (Counterpoint).
Autumn House Press is an independent, non-profit literary publishing company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Michael Simms is an American poet, novelist and literary publisher. His satiric novel Bicycles of the Gods: A Divine Comedy and his YA fantasy novel The Green Mage were published by Madville Publishing, and his most recent poetry collections are American Ash (2020) and Nightjar (2021), both published by Ragged Sky Press. His poems have been published in journals and magazines including Scientific American, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southwest Review, and West Branch. His poems have also appeared in Poem-a-Day published by the Academy of American Poets and been read by Garrison Keillor on the nationally syndicated radio show The Writer's Almanac. Simms's poems have been translated into Spanish, Russian and Arabic.
Damian Dressick is an American author from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Leslie Pietrzyk is an American author who has three traditionally published novels, Pears on a Willow Tree, A Year and a Day, and Silver Girl. Her historical novel, Reversing the River, set in Chicago on the first day of 1900, was serialized on the literary app, Great Jones Street.
Savannah Schroll Guz is an American mixed-media artist, art critic, and fiction writer. She is also author of three books of fiction, including the politically conscious fiction anthologies American Soma and In the Aftermath. She is one of 36 contributors to the national art project Her Flag, which celebrates the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Guz was named a West Virginia History Hero at the West Virginia Division of Arts, Culture and History in Charleston, West Virginia, on February 24, 2022.
Nancy Zafris is an American novelist and short story writer.
Eve Shelnutt was an American poet and writer of short stories. She lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Athens, Ohio, and Worcester, Massachusetts. Over the course of her career, she taught at Western Michigan University University of Pittsburgh, Ohio University, and The College of the Holy Cross.
James Robison is an American novelist, short story writer, poet and screenwriter. The author of The Illustrator (1988) and Rumor and Other Stories (1985), his work has frequently appeared in The New Yorker and numerous other journals. He is a recipient of the Whiting Award for his short fiction and a Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has held teaching posts at numerous universities across the United States, including the University of Houston and Loyola University Maryland.
The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection is awarded by the PEN America "to exceptionally talented fiction writers whose debut work — a first novel or collection of short stories ... represent distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise." The winner is selected by a panel of PEN Members made up of three writers or editors. The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize was originally named the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. The prize awards the debut writer a cash award of US$25,000.
Paola Corso is an American fiction writer, poet, photographer and literary activist. Corso is a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow, Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award Winner,, and included on the Pennsylvania Center for the Book's Literary Map. She is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry, including 'Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps,' (2020) with original photos by the author and archival photographs from the University of Pittsburgh Library; Catina's Haircut: A Novel in Stories (2010) on Library Journal’s notable list of first novels; Giovanna's 86 Circles And Other Stories (2005), a Binghamton University's John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist; a book of poems, Death by Renaissance (2004), and award-winning poetry collections, The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing; and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing (2012), about Pittsburgh steelworkers and garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and winner of a Triangle Fire Memorial Association Award.
Chinelo Okparanta(listen) is a Nigerian-American novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where she was raised until the age of 10, when she emigrated to the United States with her family.
Anthony Varallo is an author and professor of English] at the College of Charleston.
Carmen Maria Machado is an American short story author, essayist, and critic best known for Her Body and Other Parties, a 2017 short story collection, and her memoir In the Dream House, which was published in 2019 and won the 2021 Folio Prize. Machado is frequently published in The New Yorker, Granta, Lightspeed Magazine, and other publications. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. Her stories have been reprinted in Year's Best Weird Fiction, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year,The New Voices of Fantasy, and Best Women's Erotica.
Shannon Cain is an American writer, editor, teacher, visual artist, and activist living in France. She is the founder of La Maison Baldwin, an organization that celebrates the life of James Baldwin in Saint-Paul de Vence. Cain authored the short story collection The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, winner of the 2011 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Amanda J. Bermudez is an American author and screenwriter. Her short fiction and screenwriting have won a number of awards, including the PAGE International Screenwriting Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her films have been produced in the U.S. and internationally, and her literary writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Virginia Quarterly Review, Story, Chicago Review, The Masters Review, Fiction International, Electric Literature, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere.
