Adam Novak has published six novels: Take Fountain, Rat Park, Freaks of the Industry, The Non-Pro, City of Wheels, and the forthcoming Atwater Psycho. He writes about addiction, transactional relationships, and the death sport called the movie business.

Richey Piiparinen (1976-2024) was the Director of Urban Theory and Analytics at the School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. His focus was on the cultural, psychosocial, and demographic changes in Rust Belt cities, particularly as they relate to economic and community development. Richey held a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a Master’s in Urban Planning, Design, and Development from Cleveland State University. His essays on cities have appeared in the Atlantic’s City Lab, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Cleveland Magazine, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and his research has been highlighted in various outlets, including CBS Evening News, NPR’s Morning Edition, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN the Magazine. Richey was a contributing editor to New Geography, and he co-edited the book “Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology”. 

Liz Maugans received her BFA in printmaking from Kent State University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1992. Maugans’ work is included in the Progressive Art Collection, The Cleveland Clinic, the Dalad Collection, BF Goodrich, the Westin Collection, and The Riffe Center for Government and the Arts.  She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000 and a 2005 Artist-in-Communities Grant. Maugans was awarded an Ohio Arts Council’s International Residency to Dresden, Germany in 2009. She was honored, along with her Zygote co-founder, Bellamy Printz, with the Martha Joseph Prize for Distinguished Service from the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2012. In 2013, she was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship from Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. 

Judah Leblang is a Cleveland-raised and Boston-based writer and storyteller. His commentaries and essays have been broadcast on 200 NPR and ABC Radio Network stations, including WKSU in Northeast Ohio and WGBH in Boston. He is the author of the memoir Finding My Place (Lake Effect Press, 2012), and a regular columnist for Bay Windows, Boston’s gay newspaper. He has performed his one-man shows at Fringe Festivals in Minneapolis, Chicago, and in Winnipeg, Canada.

Chuck Joy is an Erie, Pennsylvania poet, physician, and longtime champion of the region’s literary community. Born in Cleveland and raised in Erie, Joy graduated from Cathedral Preparatory School in 1969 and earned a B.A. from Fordham University before receiving his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He went on to become a child psychiatrist while continuing to write and publish poetry.

Joy has been publishing poetry since around 1980, with work appearing in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His books include Vinyl, Percussive, Theme of Line, Said the Growling Dog, and Every Tiger Wants to Sing. His poetry frequently moves between the personal, the humorous, the musical, and the everyday, reflecting his interest in both the written and spoken word.

A central figure in Erie’s poetry scene, Joy co-founded the Poetry Scene reading series, later launched Poetry Night, and helped establish the Erie County Poet Laureate Initiative. He served as Erie County Poet Laureate from 2018 through 2021, using the position to expand public access to poetry and develop partnerships with the Erie County Public Library and other local arts organizations.

Today, Joy continues to write, perform, and support poetry in Erie. His influence on the city’s literary community has been substantial; Erie County Public Library director Blane Dessy has described him as the “OG” of Erie’s poetry community and credited him with helping keep the local poetry scene alive.

Sara Holbrook has written over a dozen books for children and teens and two poetry books for adults. Along with her co-author Michael Salinger, she is also the author of four teacher professional books on poetry, vocabulary instruction, and performance. She is a frequent speaker at schools all over the world, where her life has been enriched by talking to children of all backgrounds. Her prior jobs included serving as the Public Information Officer for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority and Director of Communications for Jones Day.  A mother and a grandmother, she lives in Mentor, OH.

Ray McNiece has earned a national reputation as a poet and performer for almost two decades through his solo theater pieces, his poetry and music shows, his captaining of 2 National Poetry Slam Championship teams, his “edutaining” children’s shows and workshops, and his yearly country-wide tours of performance poems, stories and songs.

Ray is the author of six poetry books – Dis, The Bone-Orchard Conga, The Road that Carried Me Here, Song that Fathoms Home, and Wet Sand Raven Tracks –New Haiku, and Us? Talking Across America, two solo theatre works – Dis – Voices From a Shelter, Us? Talking Across America, two music/poetry collaborations – Mouth Music, A Rust bowl Hootenanny, and one collaborative theatre work – Homegirl meets Whiteboy — with Shawn Jackson. He also co-edited the anthology of Contemporary Buddhist Poetry, America Zen. The Orlando Sentinel, reporting on Ray’s solo show at the Fringe Festival, called him “a modern-day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.”  In a review of his second theatre work, Us? Talking Across America, the Star-Phoenix said, “His thoughtful writing combines with perfectly timed delivery to create a powerful wordscape that owes as much to jazz as drama.”  He was the voice of Woody Guthrie in WCPN/NPR’s award-winning radio documentary, Hard Travellin’

Yoko Morgenstern has been working as a writer and translator in Canada, Japan, and Germany. Her recent works have appeared in The Great Lakes Review, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Review, Canadian Voices, among others. Her translation of The Printmakers Daughter by the Canadian novelist Katherine Govier was published in Japan in 2014. 

Mike DeCapite has been a dishwasher, a motel janitor, a bookstore clerk, a hospital worker, a cab driver, a factory worker, an adult-bookstore cashier, a cleaning-crew member, a gardener, a construction worker, a painter, a van driver, a parking-lot attendant, a ditch digger, a paralegal, and a copy editor, in that order. He’s grateful he’s never had to do a prison stretch, report for military service, or wear one of those fuzzy costumes flagging down traffic outside a phone store, but you never know. DeCapite is the author of the novel Through the Windshield, the chapbooks Sitting Pretty and Creamsicle Blue, and the collection of short prose Radiant Fog. His story “Sitting Pretty” was included in the Italian American Reader. Excerpts from his second novel, Ruined for Life!, have appeared in 3:AM and Sensitive Skin. His writing has appeared in angle, Cleveland Free Times, CUZ, Evergreen Review, No Tokens, Spin, Vanitas, and numerous other publications. DeCapite lives in New York City and has recently published a novel, Jacket Weather.

Jake Snodgrass is a graduate of Otterbein University and currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.  He has published several zines and has had stories appear in various publications. His collection of short stories, A Sock Full of Holes, was published by Red Giant Books in May 2014.  His second collection of short stories, A Soft Spot in the Earth’s Skull, was published in 2023.

Terry White has published two hardboiled detective fiction novels under the name Robert White:  Haftmann’s Rules (Grand Mal, 2011) and Saraband for a Runaway (2013).  His noir, crime, and mainstream stories have appeared in several webzines.  His feature-length film script, East Palestine, has been nominated for an award in the action category at this year’s TrindieFest in Trinidad, Colorado.  He is an almost lifelong resident of Ashtabula, Ohio, is married, has three children, and two grandchildren in Austin, Texas.

David Megenhardt lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with his wife, two daughters, and, of course, a dog.  He is director of a non-profit that fights for social justice and against economic inequities.   He has published several shorter pieces of fiction in handmade zines and woefully ignored journals.  Dogs in the Cathedral was published by Red Giant Books in 2012 and North of Portsmouth in 2018.   Previously, he was managing editor of Muse, a literary magazine of The Lit, and editor of the Great Lakes Review, a literary journal covering the Great Lakes region.

Erin O’Brien writes the blog The Owner’s Manual for Human Beings and is the author of the novel Harvey and Eck.  Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Cleveland Scene and the Cleveland Free Times where she wrote the column Rainy Day Woman.  She currently writes for Fresh Water Cleveland and hiVelocity.  She lives in the Cleveland area with her husband and daughter.

Grant Bailie is the author of the novels Cloud 8, Mortarville, and New Hope for Small Men. He lives in Elyria, Ohio.

Rick Ridgway (1946-2022) was the author of the novels Three Squirt Dog (St. Martin’s Press), Ablaze (Red Giant Books), and Westward (Red Giant Books). He lived and wrote in Colorado and Ohio.