Executive
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Dani Hedlund
Editor-in-Chief & Art Director
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Helen Maimaris
Managing Editor
Senior
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Victoria Bruick
Operations & Finance Coordinator
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Ejiwa ‘Edge’ Ebenebe
Assistant Creative Director & Impact Lead, Editorial Artist
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JP Legarte
Community and Grant Development Assistant & Junior Editor
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Kaitlin Lounsberry
Internship Supervisor & Senior Editor
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Nate Ragolia
Communications & Marketing Director, Senior Editor
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Valerie San Filippo
Educational Content Coordinator
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Evan Sheldon
Editorial Director
Associate
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Suzie Bartholomew
Senior Editor
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Hailey Renee Brown
Editorial Artist & Art Admin Support
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Thomas Chisholm
Senior Editor
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Race Garber
Senior Editor
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Sam Gladstone
IT Officer
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Maribel Leddy
Internship Assistant & Junior Editor
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Dominic Loise
Content Creator & Staff Writer
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Matt Peadon
Visual Identity Associate
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Eileen Silverthorn
Senior Editor
Junior
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Azalea Acevedo
Junior Editor
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Asma Al-Masyabi
Junior Editor
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Chase Bailey
Junior Editor
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Eliza Browning
Junior Editor
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Sam Burt
Junior Editor
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Inanna Carter
Junior Editor
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Erin Clements
Junior Editor
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Zara Garcia
Junior Editor
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Ally Geist
Junior Editor
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Gina Gruss
Junior Editor
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Ari Iscariot
Junior Editor
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C. E. Janecek
Junior Editor & Communications Associate
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Jazzmin Joya
Junior Editor
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Simon Kerr
Junior Editor
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Asmaani Kumar
Junior Editor
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Haley Lawson
Junior Editor
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Marizel Malan
Junior Editor
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Sonya Minner
Junior Editor
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Jaclyn Morken
Junior Editor
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Sara Santistevan
Junior Editor
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Stevi Sargas
Junior Editor
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Amber Sullivan
Junior Editor
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Aubrey Unemori
Junior Editor
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Ciena Valenzuela-Peterson
Junior Editor
Intern
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Skyler Boudreau
Intern
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Lydia Layton
Intern
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Ainsley Louie-Suntjens
Intern
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Erxi Lu
Intern
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Parker McCullough
Intern
Artist
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Enrica Angiolini
Editorial Artist
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Hailey Renee Brown
Editorial Artist & Art Admin Support
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Tyler Champion
Editorial Artist
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Bradley Clayton
Editorial Artist
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Samantha Dow
Editorial Artist
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Julian Mateus
Editorial Artist
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Daniel Reneau
Artist
Contributing
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David Abrams
Contributing Editor
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David Galef
Contributing Editor
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Scott O’Connor
Contributing Editor
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Jon Schindehette
Contributing Art Director
Consultant
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Asa C. Garber
Legal Advisor
![Drew Nolte Headshot](https://frictionlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/drew-nolte-283x300.jpg)
Drew Nolte
Web Designer
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Skyler Boudreau
Skyler Boudreau graduated from the New Hampshire Technical Institute with an AA in English and AS in General Studies. During her time at NHTI, she served as an editor and webmaster for The Eye, NHTI’s student literary journal. In 2023, she produced a digital special edition of The Eye with a focus on literary censorship, which went on to win the first place Change the World award in the New Hampshire Humanities Collaborative’s HUGEmanities contest. She is currently working on her BA in Creative Writing and English with a concentration in fiction at Southern New Hampshire University.
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Parker McCullough
Parker is a writer, poet, artist, and DJ. He graduated from the University of Chicago with an MA in Humanities, focusing on African American Literature. Parker is working on a fictional novel centering on healing generational trauma in black families through Hoodoo. His research interests include Zora Neale Hurston, Hoodoo/Voodoo, African Traditional Religion, and somatic work. Parker also enjoys writing short stories and poetry about love, lightwork, being trans, and being black in America. His passions are house music, creative writing, and telling a good story. When Parker is not writing, he desperately seeks Rosemary’s approval, his sassy cat.
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Lydia Layton
Lydia Layton is an aspiring novelist and filmmaker pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. Her literary interests include contemporary working-class fiction, narratives of trauma, and depictions of masculinity in media. In her free time, you may spot her jumping waves on the beach, musing over which language to learn next, and attempting to skateboard.
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Erxi Lu
Erxi Lu is a graduate of Amherst College with an English and Economics degree. She wrote her senior English thesis about a Chinese-American woman who embarks on a journey to find happiness within white capitalist America. She loves experimental prose that pushes against the boundaries of language and wants to have continual involvement in the publishing industry.
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Ainsley Louie-Suntjens
Ainsley Louie-Suntjens (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian writer, editor, student, and artist from Calgary. She is working towards her undergraduate in English and History at the University of Calgary. Her writing is gothic, horror-inflected, and full of weird women who get up to strange activities. You can find her work in Deathcap, Lida Literary, Wyrd & Wise, Undressed Society, and Nowhere Girl Collective. She is also a passionate dance artist, cinephile, watercolor painter, and avid thrift-shopper. You can find her social media below:
Instagram
Twitter
Letterboxd
Goodreads
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Stevi Sargas
Stevi Sargas is a queer, spec-fic author from Aotearoa New Zealand. She graduated NorthTec: Tai Tokerau Wānanga summa cum laude in 2024 with a Diploma in Creative Writing. Her work can be found in journals such as bad apple and A Part of Me. Stevi edits for F(r)iction and freelances in publishing, where her recent project won the 2023 Australian Game Developer Award (ADGA) for Excellence in Narrative. She is an unflappable welfare advocate, using her experience of chronic illness and neurodivergence to increase accessibility and awareness. Stevi writes about messy little guys new to the human condition—which, honestly—aren’t we all?
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Jazzmin Joya
Jazzmin Joya (she/her) is an enthusiastic young writer who is currently attending the University of California, Berkeley pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English and Media Studies. She enjoys reading short fiction, poetry, and horror/mystery thrillers but is open to all genres. She spent her high school career participating in an organization called WriteGirl where she was published in one of their anthologies, This Moment. She also wrote for her school’s advocacy newspaper and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate two years in a row. She plans to continue her passion in writing and exploring the publishing industry.
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Ciena Valenzuela-Peterson
Ciena Valenzuela-Peterson is a graduate student at USC pursuing a master’s degree in Literary Editing and Publishing. She graduated from USC with a BA in English Creative Writing and Political Science with a concentration in Race, Gender, and the Politics of Justice. She is the President of the USC Literary Society, the university’s premier student-led literary organization, and she is passionate about building supportive communities of readers and writers and promoting the literary arts. A lover of all things gothic, Ciena is fascinated by the macabre and the horror genre’s underrated literary merit. Her work has been published by Pornstar Martini Magazine, ARC South Pasadena, and Systems Change Alliance. In her spare time, you can find Ciena doodling in her sketchbook, eating takeout with friends, and building elaborate houses in Minecraft.
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Asma Al-Masyabi
Asma Al-Masyabi is a poet, writer, and visual artist based in Colorado. She is a Scholastic Silver Medal Poetry winner and ruth weiss Foundation Emerging Poet Award winner with publications in The Cincinnati Review, Subnivean, the Santa Clara Review, and more. In her spare time, she spends too much money on manga, watches competitive cooking shows with her family, and gets lost on Pinterest while trying to draw all the pretty outfits. She’s pursuing a degree in creative writing at the University of Colorado-Denver and looks forward to a career filled with words and art, her two biggest passions.
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Ari Iscariot
Ari Iscariot is a queer, neurodivergent, chronically ill author and artist living in Florida. They recently graduated from Florida International University summa cum laude, with a BA in Literature and a minor in International Communications. Among their many hobbies, they DM for an insatiably chaotic DND group, attend weekly meetings with their (somewhat) less chaotic writing group, “Seaquills,” and regularly fall down research rabbit holes from which they’ve always emerged unscathed. (So far.) But mostly, they write. Their writing centers intense queer relationships, indulges in the power of ravenous love, and explores the transgressive nature of gender-variant bodies.
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Sara Santistevan
Sara Santistevan was born in California, where she grew up around vivid storytellers. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a B.A. in Literature and Legal Studies. During her time at UCSC, Sara received the 2021 Reyna Grande Scholarship for her poetry on the Latina identity. Her forthcoming chapbook, The Root from Which Freedom Blossoms, explores how complicated mythologies, histories, and cultural norms can live on in the internal lives of marginalized individuals. In her free time, Sara enjoys visiting local cafes, petting all her neighborhood cats, and discovering the magic of the written word.
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Inanna Carter
Inanna is a recent graduate of Kutztown University with a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in English/Professional Writing. She’s currently undertaking an online MFA in Emerson College’s Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing program and freelances for a gaming journalism site. With her two wild cats Remy and Mouse constantly on the run, Inanna’s been doing her best to outline and write her first novel, all while crocheting, reading (more like collecting) any romance books she can find, and happily listening to BTS or Stray Kids.
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Zara Garcia
Zara Garcia is a proud Mexican American woman living in Southwest Florida, where she recently graduated with a BA in English and a minor in World Literature. She is an aspiring editor with a passion for magical realism and Latinx literature. When she isn’t reading, she is writing free verse poems in her journal, making fake cakes out of spackle, or cooking vegan food.
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Aubrey Unemori
Aubrey Unemori graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Creative Writing. She was born and raised on Maui, Hawaii but currently resides in Seattle, Washington. She likes to fill her days with reading, writing, playing games with friends, and pretending to be a coffee snob.
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Race Garber
Race has a background in editing, including fiction and non-fiction, scientific and technical papers, professional essays, and legal writing. Regardless of the nature of the writing, a powerful creation stems from strong narrative, approachable language, solid structure, and momentum-building flow. Race enjoys donating his time to Brink to assist new and established authors in suffering through the revision process and celebrating the progress.
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Haley Lawson
Haley Lawson is a writer and educator, having taught English in the U.S.A., Mongolia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Currently, she works as a Program Coordinator for AmeriCorps. A lover of all things make-believe and magick, she writes genre fiction under the pen name H. M. L. Swann. Some of her works are published in The Manchester Anthology IX and Quibble Literary. She received her master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester in December 2021. When not writing, she can be found reading tarot cards and hiking along the shores of Lake Superior.
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Simon Kerr
Simon Kerr is a writer/reader/editor from Colorado. Their home turf is fantasy and sci fi, their passion is queer representation in media, and they have opinions about loose leaf tea.
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Marizel Malan
Marizel Malan was born and raised in South Africa, and recently graduated from the University of Pretoria with an Honours Degree in English Literature. She showcases her poetry on the online platform Substack via her newsletter named I don’t drink gin and tonic. Marizel is currently working as a ghost writer, writing nonfiction books in various niches including history, hobbies and crafts. Whenever she is not reading or writing, you can find her dabbling in a variety of arts and crafts, playing Minecraft, or baking for her family.
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Valerie San Filippo
Valerie San Filippo is a writer and educator from Long Island, New York. She received her MFA in Fiction from Stony Brook Southampton. Her work has appeared in F(r)iction, PANK, TSROnline, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and a recipient of George R.R. Martin’s Miskatonic Scholarship. When she isn’t teaching, or writing stories about angry young women, she spends her time playing TTRPGs, embroidering, and caring for her pet moss balls.
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Eliza Browning
Eliza Browning is studying for her master’s degree in modernist literature at the University of Oxford. She recently graduated from Wheaton College in Massachusetts with a degree in English and art history. Her poetry and fiction appears in The Adroit Journal, Salamander Magazine, Contrary Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly and the Oxford-Cambridge Mays Anthology, among others. When not reading or writing, Eliza can be found painting, embroidering or baking with botanicals.
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Sam Burt
Sam is a tutor and proofreader living in east London. Since graduating in 2021 with a master’s in creative writing, he has been a bookseller for Phlox Books and Waterstones, and started the East London Indie Book Club to champion innovative fiction from small presses. Sam is the founder and editor of POINT BLOC, a new online literary journal that will launch later this year, and has edited fiction submissions to Bandit Fiction, An Inkling, and The Manchester Anthology IX. His fiction has appeared in Popshot Quarterly, Bandit Fiction, and Ink, Sweat and Tears, and his essays/reviews in The London Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and BookRiot. Off the page, he can usually be found baking, volunteering at a local LGBTQ+ charity, or missing shuttlecocks.
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JP Legarte
JP Legarte is an alum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who double majored in Creative Writing and Individual Plans of Study (Science, Health, and Environmental Writing). At Brink and F(r)iction, he researches and develops grant opportunities and partnerships with local and national organizations.
Outside of Brink and F(r)iction, he works as a Community Outreach Worker for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. He is a Summer 2022 Anaphora Arts Poetry Fellow, a Summer 2023 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference Nonfiction Alum, and a Summer 2023 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Nonfiction Alum and was a 2023 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Finalist with Write Bloody Publishing.
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Azalea Acevedo
Azalea Acevedo grew up in Florida, where she spent her childhood drawing portraits of her favorite characters from the books she read. In high school, she moved to South Carolina. She attended Trident Technical College and graduated from Converse University, where she studied creative and professional writing. She was an editor for The Concept Literary Magazine, the school’s literary journal, which piqued her interest in developing stories in collaboration with an editorial team. Azalea has been published in both The Concept Literary Magazine and Converse Magazine, the university’s annual publication.
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Dominic Loise
Dominic Loise lives with his librarian wife Jenna, their rabbits and many books. He met his wife one night over a shared love of reading Ray Bradbury. The rabbits love books too but aren’t readers. As a content creator for F(r)iction, Dominic writes book reviews, does interviews and has a series of personal essays about pop culture and mental health. He is open about and advocates for mental health awareness. Dominic can be found at @dominic_lives on Instagram & Twitter where he shares recently published work.
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Ejiwa ‘Edge’ Ebenebe
Ejiwa ‘Edge’ Ebenebe is a Nigerian-Canadian artist based in BC, Canada. Edge serves as Assistant Creative Director for F(r)iction, working alongside the Creative Director to craft the vision and artistic direction for each issue, as well as assisting the Managing Editor with circulation and fulfilment logistics. As Data Lead for Brink, Edge also assists the team in tracking and analyzing the varying points of information needed to ensure Brink’s impact is as focused and effective as possible.
As an immigrant, they wrestle with concepts of community and identity, both within themself and their artwork, and strive to create representation for voices (particularly Black and/or LGBTQ+ folks) who are often pushed out of positive, empowering narratives. Their artwork echoes a love for the ethereal, fantasy stories they grew up with with vibrant colours and ornamentation that weaves Edge’s experience throughout each piece they create.
They have worked with clients including Scholastic, Wizards of the Coast, and Marvel. Their work has also featured in publications such as ImagineFX Magazine, Infected By Art, and Brink’s very own F(r)iction.
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Victoria Bruick
Combining her love of spreadsheets, penchant for logistics, and close to a decade of experience working with education nonprofits, Victoria coordinates Brink’s operations and finance activities. When she’s not tapping away on her laptop with a coffee in hand, you can find her at conferences and events representing Brink and F(r)iction.
Fascinated by the way we create ourselves through the stories we tell ourselves, Victoria is a published poet and professional podcaster. She co-hosts and produces the show Book Club with Julia & Victoria and is developing a show with the University of Connecticut’s Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice.
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Asmaani Kumar
Asmaani Kumar is a graduate in Sociology from Delhi University. Brought up in Guwahati, Assam and currently living in Delhi, she works as a writer for a media company. You’ll always find her taking the longer road for walks while blasting music in her ears. A hardcore postcard collector who spends too much time writing letters, reading poetry, gazing up at the skies and daydreaming of being in the mountains or a seaside village, these days she has been trying to learn new things like a language, an instrument, and cooking. What brings her happiness more than anything is stories, seen, read, or heard and she hopes she can spend a lifetime telling stories, sometimes her own but mostly of the people she comes across. She’s always ready to listen.
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Gina Gruss
Gina Marie Gruss is an undergraduate student at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of FAU, double majoring in Creative Writing and Visual Art. She’s a born-and-raised south Floridian who hates the heat but loves her home state’s myths and nature. Her works have been featured by Amazon Prime Video, Mensa America, Wattpad, and FAU. She’s excitedly crafting her interdisciplinary senior thesis, which explores different Armageddons while centralizing disabled, queer, and diverse narratives. When not creating, she loves planning events, cooking and baking way too much food for said events, avoiding getting eaten by gators, and spoiling her cat Apollo.
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Matt Peadon
Matt Peadon is a character artist and art director working in film and video games. As the only blonde Australian that can’t surf, he pivoted and opted for a more digital medium. He was part of productions like Game of Thrones, Aquaman, Underworld, and Ghostbusters and has collaborated with organisations like Weta Workshop, NASA, KikkiK, Epic Games, and Magic Leap. Matt pursues his interest in photography and Hedlund’s quips by camera-slinging for Brink.
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Daniel Reneau
Daniel Reneau is an illustrator and toy designer from Denver, Colorado, whose art is steeped in the realms of horror and comic books. He is a graduate of the Academy of Art University and a 2013 winner of the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future award. His work has been seen in illustrations, cards, games, and toys ranging from Star Wars and Aliens to Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel. When he’s not drawing or painting, he can be found lost in the world of video games, reading comic books, or meticulously constructing ships that were seen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
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David Abrams
David Abrams is the author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit, a comedy about the Iraq War that Publishers Weekly called “an instant classic.” It was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, an Indie Next Pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Montana Honor Book, and a finalist for the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Abrams’ short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in the anthologies Montana Noir, Watchlist, and Fire and Forget. Other stories and essays have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Salon, F(r)iction, High Desert Journal, Salamander, Connecticut Review, The Greensboro Review, Consequence, and many other publications. He lives in Helena, Montana with his wife.
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Scott O’Connor
Scott O’Connor is the author of A Perfect Universe: Ten Stories, the novels Zero Zone, Untouchable, and Half World and the novella Among Wolves. He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Nate Ragolia
Nate Ragolia is an author, editor, publisher, and podcaster. He’s published three books, There You Feel Free (2015), The Retroactivist (2019), and One Person Can’t Make a Difference (2022). Nate co-hosts Debut Buddies, a podcast about firsts, and is co-founder of the indie press Spaceboy Books. At F(r)iction, he leads communication and marketing, writes grants, serves as a senior editor, and collaborates with the leadership team on a wide variety of projects and programs. He has also dabbled in webcomics, e-zines, and music blogging, and worked in community wealth development and nonprofit strategy. When he’s not doing the things listed above, Nate is a husband and a dog dad.
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David Galef
David Galef is a shameless eclectic who writes far too much for his own good, let alone that of others. He’s published extremely short fiction in the collections Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize), extremely long fiction via the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress (Kirkus Best Books of 2006), and a lot in between. His latest is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook, from Columbia University Press. His day job is as a Professor of English and the Creative Writing Program Director at Montclair State University. He’s also the new Editor-in-Chief at Vestal Review.
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Bradley Clayton
Bradley Clayton is a Brooklyn based illustrator who specializes in comics. He grew up in Alabama and developed a love of comics at a young age, mostly Wonder Woman and the X-Men. His work tends to be very influenced by melding whatever he currently finds cute with a love of classical illustrators like J.C. Leyendecker and John Singer Sargent. He would love to hear about the time you met a ghost.
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Tyler Champion
Tyler Champion is a freelance illustrator and designer. He grew up in Kentucky before moving to New Jersey to develop his passion at The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic art. After graduating in 2010 he headed back south to Nashville, TN, where he currently resides with his girlfriend, Melissa, and his two sons. Tyler has produced work for magazines, comics, design companies, and children’s books; including work for Sony music, F(r)iction magazine, Capstone Publishing, and Tell-a-Graphics.
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Julian Mateus
Julian Mateus, a born artist hailing from Bogota, Colombia, moved with his twin brother and parents to Canada when he was only 7 years old, and then immigrated to the United States five years after that. After discovering the work of visionary artists such as Syd Mead, and classic sci-fi and fantasy films like Blade Runner, Star Wars, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Julian was inspired to pursue a career in film. Since his graduation from Full Sail University in 2010, he has dedicated his natural talents toward the creation of artwork for video games, comic books, and feature films. Julian Mateus currently calls Florida his home.
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Samantha Dow
Samantha Dow is a writer, illustrator, and comic artist, based primarily out of New England. Their work, which often explores themes of the fantastic and fairytale meeting the mundane, includes Cornerwitches, a collection of short fantasy comics; Elsewhere University, an interactive and collaborative storytelling project; and the Gold Normal Tarot, a foil-accented oracle deck. When they’re not working on creative projects, they can be found sailing historic tall ships up and down the East Coast.
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Enrica Angiolini
Eren Enrica Angiolini is a comic colorist and illustrator, with a huge passion for all things fantasy. Best know for their colour work on several DC publications, Titan Comic’s Doctor Who, and Image’s Sex Criminals: Sexual Gary. Born and raised in Rome, Italy, Eren has travelled a lot and lived around the world, and is now based in the UK. When they are not colouring or drawing, they hit people with swords (for real!).
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Hailey Renee Brown
Hailey Renee Brown (Ren) is a professional illustrator born and raised in mid Michigan. A former field biologist, they moved across the country from Michigan to Pennsylvania, also moving from science to commercial art. A professionally trained artist, they attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, NJ, where they were selected the recipient of the 2017 Norman Maurer Memorial Award as well as the 2019 Joe Kubert Jumpstart Project. They have since worked for a variety of clients including scientific publications, comic publishers like Dark Horse Comics and Dynamite Entertainment, and the Brink Literacy Project.
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Suzie Bartholomew
Suzie Bartholomew hails from Indiana and works for the Indianapolis Public Library. She earned her BA in English from Purdue University North Central (now Northwest) and her MFA in Creative Writing from Butler University. Having fully embraced her inner grandma, she loves to crochet, embroider, and live off of tea while cuddling with her cat. When she’s not working or being crafty, Suzie is focused on writing stories and indulging in serial killer documentaries.
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Sam Gladstone
Sam gave up studying English at the age of sixteen and would never have guessed that he would end up involved with an organization like Brink! Instead, he specializes in the languages of machines, working as a full stack developer by day and helping Brink with any tech-related queries at all times in between. He graduated with a Master of Mathematics from the University of East Anglia and is a passionate diver, helping to introduce people to the underwater world at a local club in Norfolk, UK.
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Eileen Silverthorn
Eileen is a senior editor at F(r)iction, working on both journal submissions and the occasional review or article for F(r)Log. She loves both fiction and poetry: In fiction, Eileen looks for stories with character-driven narratives blended with detailed writing and speculative genre elements. In poetry, Eileen is drawn to imagery-heavy pieces that are unafraid to experiment with form, line breaks, and language.
Eileen is also a bookseller at the Tattered Cover in Denver, Colorado. She graduated from Colorado State University with a BA in English Creative Writing and minors in History and Women’s Interdisciplinary Studies. Inspired by her work with CSU’s undergraduate literary magazine Greyrock Review, Eileen decided to explore a career in publishing through the Denver Publishing Institute. She enjoys spending her time traveling, editing her friends’ fanfiction, reading ten books at once, spending her whole paycheck at her place of employment, and cuddling her cats whilst writing bios about herself in the third person.
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Helen Maimaris
Helen joined Brink in 2016 as an intern, soon rising to the rank of Chief of Operations, a position she held for nearly 5 years before becoming Brink’s Chief of Staff in 2023. As Chief of Staff, Helen heads up all things staff-related, from the development of new education programs, staff culture practices, and staff management, to the legal and logistical needs of running a nonprofit. When she’s not madly consuming any comic she can get her hands on, she also serves as the Managing Editor of F(r)iction, overseeing the submission pipeline, senior editor team, volunteer training, and production of the journal.
Helen lives in Bristol, UK, and travels extensively, with past adventures including training as a professional scuba diving guide, participating in scientific fieldwork with humpback whales in Ecuador, and one particularly incredible eye-contact encounter with a wild male orangutan.
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Dani Hedlund
Dani Hedlund founded F(r)iction in 2015, striving to create a home for unique and boundary pushing literature. As Editor-in-Chief, Dani grew F(r)iction from a small imprint to one of the fastest growing literary journals in the world, featuring the world’s most famous storytellers alongside diverse, debut talent. Dani sets the publication’s vision, selects each issue’s theme, curates and approves all content, and writes those lovely editor’s notes she’s convinced no one reads. Additionally, Dani acts as Creative Director, guiding each unique issue’s overall design and art direction. As CEO of Brink Literacy Project (F(r)iction‘s nonprofit owner), she ensures that each issue elevates marginalized voices, works as a teaching medium across the globe, and uses storytelling to change lives.
Dani speaks at events all over the world on the importance of literacy and education reform, supporting emerging creatives, and getting people excited about the next generation of literature. She has shared Brink’s mission to spur cultural and political change in the Times, the Sun, KOA radio, CW, Channel 4, Fox 31, and other media.
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Kaitlin Lounsberry
Kaitlin Lounsberry graduated magna cum laude from Columbia College Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and a minor in fiction writing. She also earn her master’s degree in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University with distinction. While working towards her master’s, Kaitlin was a managing editor for The Garica Boy, published through Big Shoulders Book. She has bylines in The State Journal-Register, The Columbia Chronicle, Pop’Stache, and Chicago Talks. Kaitlin is currently working on her revising first novel, learning Hangul, playing Uno, and attending live concerts in the Chicago area.
At Brink and F(r)iction, Kaitlin leads the Publishing Internship Program, serves as a senior editor, and copyedits/proofreads upcoming F(r)iction issues.
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Thomas Chisholm
Thomas Chisholm is a freelance editor, creative writer, and an alumnus of The Evergreen State College. He received a year of formal copyediting training from the University of Washington’s editing certificate program, though he especially enjoys cracking a story open and getting into developmental edits. Originally from suburban Detroit, he’s called Seattle home since 2009. His creative work has appeared in Inkwell, Drizzle Review, and Vanishing Point Magazine.
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Jon Schindehette
Jon is a veteran of the marketing, gaming and publishing industries. Through the years, he has worked with clients such as: Disney, Fox Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast, ThinkGeek, Harley-Davidson, Microsoft, Kodak, Price Waterhouse, Atari, Activision, Nintendo, Pokémon, Sony Entertainment, CBS, Bioware, Bethesda SoftWorks, Crystal Dynamics, and many more. In his spare time, Jon creates lots of sawdust while building fun woodworking projects.
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C. E. Janecek
C. E. Janecek is the internal newsletter wizard of the Brink team, keeping the staff up to date on happenings, deadlines, and projects each month. C. E. recently got their MFA in poetry at Colorado State University and is now a freelance editor and writer—having work featured in Poetry , Booth ,Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Online at www.cewritespoems.com.
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Chase Bailey
Chase Bailey is a baker living in Columbus, OH. He holds a BA in Professional Writing from Miami University and he enjoys learning about the evolution of colloquial language. Chase is a fiend for any book with magic or queer characters—don’t even get him started on queer characters with magic. When he’s not spamming your feed with F(r)iction-related content, Chase enjoys listening to the birds, sharing apples with his dog, and doing yoga. Eventually—eventually—he will put together a chapbook of poetry.
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Asa C. Garber
Like many writers, Asa spends most of his time writing drafts, then editing to the point of loving, then hating, then loving what he’s written. A select few read and appreciate his work; the general public either ignores or does not understand it. But such is the life of a lawyer. Asa is the founder of Reason Legal, LLC, providing legal services and consultation to businesses and entrepreneurs. He is a proud supporter of Brink’s many good works.
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Ally Geist
Ally is a quirky little Canuck living in Toronto, Canada (yes, they do have a lot of maple syrup up there!). She graduated with a BA in Theatre Studies (specializing in Playwriting and Dramaturgy) from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. She also has a post-grad certificate in Publishing from Ryerson University. When Ally is not reading, crying over cute puppy videos on the internet, defending the merits of the Oxford comma, or watching reruns of Schitts Creek, she is most likely lip-synching for her life in her bedroom, pretending she is one of the fabulous Drag Race queens.
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Jaclyn Morken
Jaclyn is an aspiring writer and editor from Saskatoon, Canada, where she completed an MFA in Writing and BA Hons in English at the University of Saskatchewan. Her work can be found in antilang no. 1, Dually Noted (March 2019), and River Volta Review of Books. Jaclyn writes fantasy and speculative fiction.
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Amber Sullivan
Amber Sullivan is probably hiding in a dark corner somewhere. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English Writing at the University of Colorado in 2018. Her work at Brink includes editing for F(r)iction and F(r)iction Log, reviewing submissions, and other miscellaneous assignments. Her writing can also be found in F(r)iction Log. Fortunately for Amber, Brink is mostly remote, as she usually smells a bit like canned fish after her cat drags her shoes into his food bowl. She spends her time outside of Brink training her apartment demon, working a day job, and feeling like a secret agent while writing fanfiction under an alias.
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Erin Clements
Erin Clements is an Ohio-based knower of things and sender of emails. Armed with a graduate certificate in Publishing from New York University and a summa cum laude BA in English, she does a bit of everything: outside of her work with Brink, she works as the Author Coordinator and Personal Assistant to the CEO at Lucinda Literary, as a freelance Publicity Assistant and Community Manager for a few publishing small businesses, and as an editor.
She loves everything literary, from Shakespeare to the newest fantasy and romance bestsellers, and she’ll happily tell you her opinions on everything. When she’s not working, she’s probably buying more books than she could ever read, making travel plans, talking about how she previously worked for bestselling author John Green, or getting emotional over cute dogs.
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Sonya Minner
Sonya Minner is a self-proclaimed writer from western Pennsylvania. She successfully graduated from California University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing in 2015. Since then, she’s bounced around from place to place. She currently works in an office by day and writes YA fiction (and sometimes hockey articles) by night. If she’s not writing, she’s probably tweeting. One day, she hopes to pay off her student loan debt and publish a best-selling YA novel, just maybe not in that order.
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Evan Sheldon
Evan lives in Denver, CO and is a graduate from the Denver Publishing Institute. He is the author of Shed the Midnight (Ghost City Press, 2019). His creative work has appeared in over forty different publications and has been translated into Russian. When he is not writing or editing, he is most likely reading to his young daughter or studying the history of weird literature and fairy tales.
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Maribel Leddy
Maribel Leddy graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Writing Seminars. She’s originally from Buffalo, New York, but she now lives in Chicago where she works as an Associate Content Strategist at Yakkety Yak, a digital marketing agency. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking, traveling, and eating.
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Drew Nolte
Drew Nolte is a professional designer who decided to take time off work and get an MFA in poetry. Using his web and design knowledge, he looks for projects and opportunities to help the literary world anyway he can. He has been a marketing designer, college web designer, partner in a ruby on rails company, and now leading design for a luxury travel company.