Spring 2026
Savannah Brooks earned her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and spent the first decade of her career working in publishing, first as an editor and then as a literary agent. After contracting a debilitating illness, she left the field to focus on writing and teaching. Among other publications, her short stories have been featured in Prime Number Magazine, New Plains Review, and Inscape; her essays in The Guardian, Hobart, and Barely South Review; and her book reviews in Oyster River Pages, The Hong Kong Review, and Bridge Eight. A disabled writer suffering from the most literal of broken hearts (and stomachs), she lives in the mountains of Asheville with her two black cats, Eggs Benedict and Toaster Strudel. You can find more at savannahbrooks.com.
Luke Hankins is the director of UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and is the founder and editor of the non-profit literary press Orison Books. A graduate of the Indiana University MFA Program, where he held The Yusef Komunyakaa Fellowship in Poetry, he is the author of several poetry collections, including MAGNITUDE: New & Selected Short Poems (Texas Review Press, 2027). Hankins has edited or co-edited a number of anthologies, including Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets, Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems (with Nomi Stone), the Best Spiritual Literature series (Orison Books), and Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings (also with Nomi Stone, forthcoming Jan. 2026). He is also the author of a book of essays, The Work of Creation, and a volume of translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems.
Tiana Kennell is the Food and Dining Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. A Detroit native and Michigan State University graduate, Tiana has 20 years of journalism experience, covering food, beverage, arts, culture, entertainment, and more for multimedia outlets. For nine years, she served as the Louisiana Flavor Reporter for The Shreveport Times. In 2021, Tiana relocated from the bayous of Louisiana to the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she reports on the local and regional hospitality and agriculture industries, as well as food insecurity issues and tourism. When not watching reality television cooking shows with her partner, Russell, and their two cats, Yogurt and Tofu, Tiana enjoys writing fiction, running, dancing, costuming, and trying new recipes.
Dale Neal is the author of the novels Kings of Coweetsee and The Woman with the Stone Knife, honored by the N.C. Society of Historians. His other novels include Appalachian Book of the Dead, a Southern Buddhist thriller shortlisted for the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award; Cow Across America, winner of the Novello Literary Award; and The Half-Life of Home. His novella, Floodmarks, is forthcoming in 2026 from Regal House. His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Our State, Smoky Mountain Living, North Carolina Literary Review, Appalachian Journal, Carolina Quarterly, Still, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in creative writing at Warren Wilson College and was a prize-winning journalist for the Asheville Citizen-Times. He also taught creative writing for Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Asheville Graduate Center. He is an associate fiction editor for Orison Books. Living in Asheville, he dodges mama bears and cubs on his morning walks up Sunset Mountain.
Jamieson Ridenhour is a playwright, novelist, and producer of the acclaimed audio-drama Palimpsest. He has written werewolf murder-mysteries, academic studies of vampire film, and plays about punk rock. His ghost play Grave Lullaby was a finalist for the Kennedy Center’s David Cohen Playwriting Award in 2012. You can find out more about his work at jamiesonridenhourwriter.com.
Ed Southern is the author of Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South (Blair, 2021), a finalist for the SIBA Southern Book Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and is the editor of the anthology The Devil’s Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina (Blair, 2025). His work has appeared in The Bitter Southerner, North Carolina Literary Review, Salvation South, Asheville Poetry Review, storySouth, PineStraw, South Writ Large, The Dirty Spoon, Wake Forest Magazine, and elsewhere. Since 2008 he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network.