Alexis Almeida has lived in Texas for just over a year and a half. Before she landed here, she had just completed her MA in South American literature while living in Madrid. She is a poet, a flutist, and an aspiring harmonica player. You can read her work in the fourth and fifth editions of Unsaid, and you can see her prancing around with the Minor Mishap Marching Band on almost any given weekend in Austin. She is also searching for the best pecan pie in town. If you have any inside information, please feel free to direct her to the appropriate café counter.

Born and raised in Virginia and Texas, Phyllis Brasenell lived in the Netherlands, Ghana, and Thailand before having the good sense to make Austin her home in 2009. She is a freelance journalist who sometimes secretly dabbles in short fiction and has a bad habit of falling asleep while reading. Phyllis lives in north central Austin with her husband and two very large dogs.

Dana DeGreff is from Miami and received her bachelor of arts in English and creative writing from Florida State University in 2008. She then spent a year in Spain teaching English to children and adults, traveling much of Europe, and hiking over 200 miles on the Camino de Santiago. In 2009 she was accepted to the University of Texas at Austin and went on to receive her MA in creative writing in 2011. In the spring of 2011, she was awarded the Fania Kruger Fellowship in Writing and the Michael Adams Thesis Prize in Fiction. She has published short stories in Conte and Able Muse. Currently, she is working on a novel. Dana is also interested in theatre and art; in the spring of 2011 she interned at Center Stage Texas where she assisted in the production of Treasure Island and The Lion King. Along with her writing classes with Badgerdog this summer, she will be working as director/producer of The Aristocats and The Light Thief. When she is not teaching, Dana can be found reading, writing, watching movies, mountain biking, and dancing Argentine tango.

Shamala Gallagher came to Austin from San Francisco, where she worked as a crisis counselor for homeless families. For the past two years she has held a James A. Michener Fellowship in poetry at UT, which means she can normally be found at a table near her window, staring intently. Alternate pastimes include swimming or bicycling through the heat, hitting tennis balls in wildly wrong directions, and wandering the yard calling for her adventurous cat. Her poems can be read in MELUS and Spiral Orb and are forthcoming in The Offending Adam.

Bradley Harrison grew up in Colfax, Iowa, and is a graduate of Truman State University. He is currently a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin where he studies both poetry and fiction and works for Bat City Review. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, CutBank, Memorious, Devil’s Lake, Precipitate, and other journals. He has a wife, Rachel, and two dogs, Marley and Echo, the latter of which recently ate his glasses.

Neena Husid is a writer-for-hire who gets a charge out of spreading the word about words. While not particularly spiritual, or even that syntactically gifted, Husid does like to believe she is helping heal the planet, one well-crafted sentence at a time. Delusional? Perhaps. But in actuality, she does have a blog she bills as a literary theme park for readers and writers. Visit www.drashpit.com and take a ride. Submissions are welcome and wanted.

Over the last two decades, poet-for-hire Jena Kirkpatrick has self-published eight books; cowritten, directed, and produced three multimedia performance art pieces; and competed in two national slam poetry competitions. Jena is a whirlwind of activity and creativity, touring nationwide with Trio of Poets. On Saturdays, she can be found at Barton Creek Farmers Market writing “Poems on the Spot While You Shop” on her antique typewriter. Jena is a proud mother of two beautiful children, Ellis and Lila. When not scribbling away on a random scrap of paper, Jena likes to rollerblade, kayak, hike, and practice yoga.

Megan Kruse was raised on Puget Sound undergrowth, the scent of damp paper, moss-cling, and the chop of waves. She has received residency grants from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center of Nebraska and the Ragdale Foundation of Illinois, as well as an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and her work has been widely published in various literary journals. Currently, she lives in a fishing cabin in Prairie Lea, Texas, where she is working on a novel.

Jeff Pethybridge holds an MA in creative writing from Boston University and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri. His work appears widely in journals such as Ploughshares, the Southern Review, Smartish Pace, LIT, Notre Dame Review, DIAGRAM, Poor Claudia, and Chicago Review. He lives in Austin with his wife and son.

Virginia Reeves lives on Austin’s East Side with her husband and two daughters. She was a finalist for the 2010 Keene Prize, and her story “Queenfish” was a top-ten finalist in the 2011 Tennessee Williams fiction contest. Her fiction has appeared in the Baltimore Review, Takahe, and 42opus. She is currently an MFA candidate at UT’s Michener Center for Writers.

Adeena Reitberger was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. She received her MFA from Western Michigan University and is a former fiction editor at Third Coast. Currently, she teaches for Austin Community College and works as an editorial assistant at American Short Fiction. Her work is published or forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, NANO Fiction, and the Sierra Nevada Review.

Terri Schexnayder quickly discovered a way to express herself and stand out in a crowd of ten children. Written words became her voice as they flowed onto the pages of diaries and into scripts for neighborhood garage plays. Terri graduated summa cum laude from St. Edward’s University in Austin and is now a regular contributor for austinwoman magazine. Her family stories have appeared in Texas Co-Op Power magazine. She recently returned to the St. Edward’s campus as guest editor for their award-winning publications. 

Claire Sylvester Smith grew up in suburban Illinois and has made it to Austin by way of Michigan, Colorado, and Oregon. She was a Hopwood Award Winner in poetry at the University of Michigan, and recent poems of hers can be found in Pleiades, Ninth Letter, and Poor Claudia. She is currently an MFA candidate at UT’s Michener Center for Writers and is an associate poetry editor at Bat City Review. 

A journalist and musician, Erin Walter has taught writing for Austin public schools and Chicago nonprofits Open Books and 826CHI. As the literacy director for Open Books, she edited and published stories by hundreds of Chicago writers of all ages. Her own stories have appeared in the Austin American-Statesman, the Oregonion, the Morning Call, Bookslut, Fametracker, Love, Chicago, and Chicago6Corners, On the Fly: Stories in Eight Minutes or Less, and more. She is always at work on personal essays and has recently returned to a love of fiction writing. A native Austinite and enthusiastic traveler, Erin drags her husband and daughter on a quest for Mexican food in every country they visit.

Liz Wyckoff grew up in Northern New York and recently received her MFA in fiction from Oregon State University. In Austin, she spends her days reading for American Short Fiction, volunteering with Austin Bat Cave, working as an Events Host at BookPeople, and teaching for Badgerdog. Sometimes she also does things not related to writing, like eating ice cream. So far, her life in Texas has been pretty delightful. Her work has been published in Slice magazine.

Cara Zimmer was raised on Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams and distinctive vowels. After graduating from the University of Texas with an MA in creative writing, she continues to hang around Austin, dreaming of a yard full of dogs.