Nathan Leslie (Editor, Best Small Fictions) won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his satirical collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. Nathan’s nine previous books of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is currently the series editor for Best Small Fictions, the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.
Meg Pokrass (Editor, Best Microfiction) is the Founding Editor of Best Microfiction, winner of a Bronze Independent Press Award (Bronze IPPY) in the Book Series Category in 2021. She is the author of seven prose collections and two novellas in flash, including most recently a micro collection, Spinning to Mars, winner of a Blue Light Book Award in 2020. Meg’s writing has been widely published and anthologized, including 2 Norton Anthologies of flash fiction, The Best Small Fictions, Best British & Irish Flash Fiction, Wigleaf Top 50, and many hundreds of literary journals and international anthologies of flash. Recent writing has appeared in Washington Square Review, Electric Literature, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, Five Points, American Journal of Poetry, Plume Poetry, Jellyfish Review, Wigleaf and Monkeybicycle. Meg serves as Co-Founder of San Francisco’s Flash Fiction Collective Reading Series, Flash Challenge Editor for Mslexia Magazine, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival, U.K, and Founding Editor of New Flash Fiction Review. She resides in Northern England.
Gary Fincke‘s (Editor, Best Microfiction) books have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, The Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Nonfiction Prose, and the Wheeler Prize for Poetry. His latest collections are The Sorrows: Stories (Stephen F. Austin, 2020) and The Infinity Room: Poems (Michigan State, 2019). His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in such periodicals as Harper’s, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Missouri Review as well as in Best American Essays 2020 and Best Small Fictions 2020.
Sudha Balagopal’s short fiction is published in Smokelong Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine and Pidgeonholes among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Pushcart Prize and is listed in the Wigleaf top 50.
Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a Blackhawk, Ms native. She has been published with Electric Literature, Hobart Pulp, Booth, Fractured Lit, Jellyfish Review, and more. She is currently working on her novel. Exodus loves the color green.
Jerry Chiemeke is an editor, culture critic, author and lawyer. His works have appeared in publications like The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Republic, Inlandia Journal, The Guardian and Agbowo, among others. He frequently writes columns on music and film for The Lagos Review, and on his medium page. Jerry is the winner of the 2017 Ken Saro Wiwa Prize for Criticism, and a recipient of the 2019 Connect Nigeria Award for Excellence. He currently volunteers as a mentor for the Springg Writers Fellowship. He is the author of the short story collection Dreaming Of Ways To Understand You, and the poetry chapbook Notes for Nnedimma.
Vanessa Chan is a Malaysian writer preoccupied with identity, colonization and women who don’t toe the line. She has writing published or forthcoming in Conjunctions, Electric Lit, Ecotone, BOMB Magazine and more. She’s a fiction editor at TriQuarterly, and her work has been supported by Sewanee, Tin House, and Disquiet International. She is at work on a novel and a story collection.
Noa Covo‘s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Jellyfish Review, Waxwing, Best Small Fictions 2021, Best Microfiction 2021, Passages North and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.
Jeff Friedman’s eight book ,The Marksman, was published in November 2020 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has received numerous awards and prizes for his poetry, mini tales, and translations, including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.
Caroljean Gavin‘s work has appeared in places such as Pithead Chapel, Milk Candy Review and Barrelhouse. She is the editor of What I Thought of Ain’t Funny (Malarkey Books), an anthology of short fiction based on the jokes of Mitch Hedberg. Her flash chapbook Shards of a Stained Glass Moving Picture Fairy Tale is forthcoming from Selcouth Station.
Jules Hogan is a writer and editor from the blue ridge mountains and a fiction MFA student at ASU. Stories can be found in Everything Change Vol. iii, Pithead Chapel, the Yalobusha Review and elsewhere. Jules is the 2021 fiction meets science fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftkolleg in Germany. Follow them on Twitter @seektheyonder
Di Jayawickrema is a hybrid writer living in New York City. Her work has appeared in wildness, Jellyfish Review, Pithead Chapel, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a VONA alumnus and an incoming Kundiman fellow. She is working on her first book. Visit her at dijayawickrema.com.
Hillary Leftwich is the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press/The Accomplices 2019). Her hybrid memoir, Aura–a series of survivor stories told to her epileptic son–is forthcoming from Future Tense Books in 2022. She is the founder and owner of Alchemy Author Services & Workshop and teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers. She focuses her writing on class struggle, single motherhood, trauma, mental illness, the supernatural, ritual, and the impact of neurological disease. She teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities as well as writing. She lives in Denver with her partner, son, and cat, Larry.
Melissa Ostrom is the author of The Beloved Wild and Unleaving. Her stories have appeared in many journals and been selected for Best Small Fictions 2019 and Best Microfiction 2020. She teaches English at Genesee Community College in western New York. Learn more at http://www.melissaostrom.com or find her on Twitter @melostrom.
Kaj Tanaka‘s fiction has appeared in New South, New Ohio Review, Hobart and Tin House. Kaj lives in Shiprock, New Mexico.
Hananah Zaheer’s recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Waxwing, AGNI, Smokelong, Pithead Chapel, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Alaska Quarterly Review and elsewhere. A flash chapbook, Lovebirds, is forthcoming from Bull City Press. She is currently working on a novel. You can find her @hananahzaheer
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. She reads for Barren Magazine, Heavy Feather Review and Pithead Chapel. Find her at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.