Muriel Leung
twitter: @murmurshewrote
Born and raised in Queens, New York, Muriel Leung now currently lives and writes in Los Angeles where she’s a Dornsife Fellow at University of Southern California’s PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), which is a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth about lovers moving through death cycles. She is currently working on a poetic essay collection about the history of Asian American labor, grief, mental health, and sexuality as well as a linked short story collection about ghosts and after-worlds. A recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop, and Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, she is also a contributing editor to the Bettering American Poetry anthology. She also edits for Apogee Journal, which has recently launched its “We Outlast Empire” series against imperialism and current presidential policies and is working on its forthcoming Issue 10 (so keep a lookout!) She is a Cancer Sun, Virgo Rising, and Aquarius Moon, and appreciates your sympathies. When she’s not deep in research or writing mode, she can be spotted hula hooping, being passive aggressive, or tweeting about identity politics.
Selected Works: “This is to Save Several Lives” (in Nat. Brut), “A House Fell on All of Us” (in Drunken Boat), “Stranger” (in SUBLEVEL), “Life of a Drowning” (in Poor Claudia)
Website: www.murielleung.com
Instagram: @murmurshewrote
Photo credit: Sarah Gzemski
Meg Eden
twitter: @ConfusedNarwhal
Meg Eden’s work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, RHINO and Gargoyle. She teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland and Anne Arundel Community College. She has five poetry chapbooks, and her novel “Post-High School Reality Quest” is about retro gaming, unreliable narrators, faith, sassy text parsers and mental health. She writes about the intersection of storytelling craft between writing and game design (particularly environmental storytelling), and how nostalgia and retro aesthetics impact how we play games. When she isn’t writing, she’s walking, woodworking, playing Splatoon or Fire Emblem, or watching someone else play video games through Let’s Plays. Unlike her husband, she loves walking simulators.
Selected Works: “Going on a Quest – How Games Inspired Meg Eden” (in Tales of the Ravenous Reader), “I Love When Stories Are Told Through Objects” (in YA Interrbang), “Publishing Before the Query Letter: Literary Magazines and the Emerging Writer” (in Writer’s Digest), “Easter Dinosaur Poem” (in Commonweal)
Facebook: Meg Eden Writes Poems
Instagram: meden_author
Website: megedenbooks.com
Emily Pinkerton
twitter: @neongolden
Selected Works: My chapbook, Natural Disasters (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), “Rift and Fracture” (in Monday Night Lit), “Levels of the Game” (in Hobart), “Coyotes“, “Poem for Illinois“, and “Aesculus Californica” (in Noble/Gas Qtrly 203.4)
“Blight“ (in Noble/Gas Qtrly 204.3) – I especially love the way this one dovetails with “Aesculus Californica”. I’m really glad they’re companions with the same publication.
“Black Point“ (in BlazeVOX) – one of my better poems about surfing
“In Houston“ (in Juked) – because it captures a sliver of the contradictory weirdness that makes growing up in Houston so uniquely conflicting.
Website: thisisemilypinkerton.tumblr.com