Who dons the birdcoat?

Anna Sandy Elrod

Editor in Chief

Anna Sandy Elrod is a poet and essayist whose work can be found in journals such as Pleiades, Threepenny Review, North American Review, Iron Horse, and FUGUE. Her essay "The Number of Hair" was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021. She holds an MFA and a PhD in poetry from Georgia State University and teaches at Kennesaw State University. She can be found at various coffee shops between Atlanta and her home in rural Georgia that she shares with her husband, daughter, and several other small creatures.

Anna loves to read Granta, Jericho Brown, Ilya Kaminsky, The Paris Review, Diane Seuss, T. S. Eliot (she knows), The Mississippi Review, Marie Howe, Eula Biss, Guernica, Frank O’Hara, and The Sun.

Shannon Finck

Poetry Editor

Shannon Finck is a lecturer in English and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. She earned her Ph.D. in transatlantic modernism with a secondary emphasis in global postmodern and contemporary literatures. She also holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction and poetry from Georgia College (GCSU) in Flannery O’Connor’s hometown of Milledgeville, GA. Her critical and creative work appear in such journals as ISLE, ASAP/J, Angelaki, a/b: Autobiography Studies, Salt Hill, Tiny Spoon, Lammergeier, The Florida Review, and FUGUE.

Shannon likes to read autotheory, speculative fiction, and experimental writing. Recent faves—not necessarily in these forms and genres—include Lovability by Emily Kendall Frey, Temporary by Hilary Leichter, and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

Anya Vostrova

Essays Editor

Anya Vostrova is a writer based in Atlanta Georgia. After growing up between St. Petersburg, Russia and Long Island, New York she went on to study Russian and French literature at Bard College. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington Writing Seminars. She creates and adores work that explores the building, layering, and rupture of connections in place, time, memory and language.

Lauren Mariko Scherr

Assistant Essays Editor

Lauren Mariko Scherr is a Japanese-American writer whose essays have appeared in Off Assignment, The Audacity, ANMLY, and elsewhere. She has been featured as an emerging writer by Roxane Gay and nominated for Best of the Net. After a year of traveling to 100 cities in 20 countries, Lauren is delighted to be back home in Honolulu, Hawai'i. You can also find her on Substack (@yasumi), on Instagram (@laurenmariko), and frequently in Brooklyn, where she likes to pretend she still lives.

Daphne Maysonet

Assistant Poetry Editor

Daphne Maysonet is a Caribbean-American writer whose poetry has appeared in Third Coast, Prairie Schooner, Southern Indiana Review, Chautauqua and The Acentos Review, and whose prose has appeared in Luna Luna Magazine and The Memphis Flyer. She’s been a finalist for fellowships at the Kenyon Review and Graywolf, and has presented at AWP, the New Orleans Poetry Festival and the New York City Poetry Festival. Daphne received her MFA from the University of Memphis, where she served as lead poetry editor for The Pinch. She is working on a collection of poetry and teaching English at Augusta University in Georgia.

Daphne likes to read Edward Hirsch, Cornelius Eady, Charles Simic, Sharon Olds and many more, and is currently reading anthologies Latino Poetry, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4 and Pinholes in the Night. She likes poems that pose mysteries of experience to both speaker and reader.

Additional Readers

Poetry

Sharo

Essays

Chila Woychik

Ghost Peach Press

Accepting Readers