MASTHEAD
UPPER MANAGEMENT
Miranda Ramírez
Press Director
Miranda Ramírez is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and writer born and raised in Houston, Texas. She's the founder and director of Defunkt Magazine & Press, a literary columnist for Public Poetry, a guest editor for Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and a co-organizer of the Houston Poetry and Arts Festival. You may find her work in Atticus Review's–The Attic, Coffin Bell, Cowboy Jamboree, Cutthroat Journal's anthology Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, and Ripples in Space. She is drafting her first novel as an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University.
Keagan Wheat
Editor in Chief
Keagan began his love of writing as a musician, but as he moved through the UH Creative Writing Department, he became more interested in poetry. His poetry often focuses on transgender identity and how others, especially family, interact with that identity, though his more recent poetry starts thinking through how congenital heart disease impacts his identity. AT UH, he worked on Volumes 20, 21, and 22 of Glass Mountain. He has been published by Z Publishing in Texas’s Best Emerging Poets, the Fall 2018 issue of The Tulane Review, and Shards Issue 4.
Victoria Richards
Managing Editor
Victoria Richards received a MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York, NY. She is a poet, writer, and educator residing in Houston, Texas by way of Queens, New York. Her work focuses on the evolution of language as a resistance to declassification of Black folks in the United States of America with a specific interest in exploring the beauty of ecology and generations of Black women existing in the deep south. She has been published in Lunch Ticket Journal, Eleven and a Half Journal, and was the 2019 winner recipient of The New School MFA Chapbook Series in Poetry. She was recently supported by Tin House at the 22’ Tin House Summer Workshops.
William Whitmire
Director of Development
William “Will” Whitmire is a queer fiction writer and graduate candidate in Sam Houston State University’s MFA/MA program in Creative Writing, Editing & Publishing/English. Will enjoys writing about queer experience, music, and the obscure moments that never vanish. When he isn’t writing, he’s researching and experiencing the wide range of queer literature, and spending time with his husband and three dogs. Will aspires to be a professor of English and Creative Writing — something he is sure will make him rich one day.
FICTION TEAM
Diamond Braxton
Senior Prose Editor
Diamond Braxton (she/her) is a queer, mixed-race Black-Mexican writer, editor, educator, and community organizer pursuing an MFA at Texas State. Her work is forthcoming or featured in Best Microfiction 2023, Sundress Publication's Best of the Net anthology, The Forge, The Hellebore, Stanchion, and more. She is the Founder of Abode Press and a Copy Editor for Porter House Review. She is a Lambda Literary 2023 Retreat Fellow and a Tin House 21' Workshop Alum. Learn more about her work at www.diamondgizellebraxton.com
Lihem Amlack
Prose Reader
Lihem Amlak is a senior at the University of Houston. She is an English Literature major with a minor in Public Relations, set to graduate in December 2022. Her passion for reading is what led her to the field of publishing, which is what she aims to pursue upon graduation. Some fun facts about Lihem are that she was born and raised in Dallas (she loves H-town though), has a book account on Instagram where she posts reviews, and she spent last summer in London visiting family.
Raul Martinez
Prose Reader
Raul Martinez is a horror writer and graduate candidate at Sam Houston State University’s MA program in English. Raul enjoys writing about psychological, atmospheric, and Lovecraftian horror. Besides writing, he enjoys conducting research over literary theory particularly marxist, race, and queer theory. Raul’s big goal is to teach literature at community college, while also working for a horror magazine.
Isabelle Sitchon
Prose Reader
Isabelle Sitchon is an undergraduate at the University of Houston, studying for her B.A. in journalism with a minor in psychology. She has always loved reading and writing ever since she was a child, and she is very excited to read submissions from various voices all over the community. In the future, Isabelle hopes to develop a career in the publishing industry. When she has free time, Isabelle enjoys singing, writing and listening to music. One of her most recent reads is “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-Joo.
Frederick Williams
Prose Reader
Fredrick Williams is an animator, fiction writer and undergraduate at Sam Houston State University. With a love for all things writing and storytelling, Fredrick has worked as a writing tutor for Sam Houston’s Academic Success Center, as well as the lead fiction editor for the Beacon Literary & Arts Journal. He hopes to publish novels, short stories, and comics with a focus on the culture and experiences of the African diaspora.
POETRY TEAM
Samantha Padgett
Poetry Editora
Samantha “Sam” Padgett received an MFA in Creative Writing, Publishing, and Editing and an MA in English from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. She is a poet and writer whose work focuses on childhood and the hauntological nature of trauma—the way it often creeps around corners, just within our periphery. Her work has been featured or is upcoming in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, New South, North American Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she is working as a Communication Coordinator for the University of Texas School of Law and teaching an adult poetry workshop at Aspired Minds Art Center in Buda, TX. She lives in Austin, TX with her partner and cat.
Yvette Chan
Poetry Reader
Yvette Chan is a poet and screenwriter from Hong Kong. She experiments with the boundaries of writing, using video to combine visual and aural elements to present her poetry. She received a BA from the University of Warwick and served as head editor of their literary magazine Kamena. Her work has been published by the borderline, celestite poetry, Tigers Zine, Variety Pack with more publications awaiting. She was shortlisted by the Wells Festival of Literature in 2021, and is published with Verve Poetry Press as part WHERE ELSE: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology. Twitter: @yve__c
CREATIVE NONFICTION TEAM
Dominique Leon
Senior CNF Editor
Dominique Leon is a wife and dog mom, a military brat, a behavioral health care professional, a leadership buff, a lover of nature, animals, and books, a traveler, a dreamer, and at the depths of her soul, a writer. Her short stories have appeared in Roar and Thunder Magazine, The Lorelei Signal, The WiFiles, and Romantic Shorts. She has a master's degree in English and Creative Writing and recently achieved her dream of landing a job that pays her to read books (writing literature study guides). She's slowly but surely working on her debut novel.
Charlene Caruthers
Associate CNF Editor
Charlene H. Caruthers is a fiction writer from San Antonio, Texas. Her short story “Black and Blue” appeared in the 10th ed., of Humid Literary Magazine. She has also written book reviews which can be found at Porter House Review where she serves as the Associate Fiction Editor. She is a third-year fiction candidate at Texas State University and is currently working on her first novel. When she is not reading or writing she can be found walking her dog, Arya, along the nature trails in San Marcos, Texas.
Aaron Deck
CNF Reader
Aaron Deck is a lover of alliteration and carefully crafted prose and his favorite candle scent is “Used Book Store.” He spent several years devoted to the Arizona writing scene where he attended weekly workshops and every literary event Phoenix and the surrounding cities could muster, even meeting his future wife at a writers’ salon hosted by a local small press. Last year he moved across the country and is currently immersing himself in the strange waters of Southern Gothic storytelling in Atlanta. His work has been featured in Four Chambers Press, Diverse Voices Quarterly and Barking Sycamores–A Neurodivergent Press.
Quinn
CNF Reader
Quinn is an author from Phoenix, Arizona who is living and writing in Portland, Oregon. Her education and career are in psychology and behavioral health, and her passion lies in writing short fiction and poetry. Her work can be found at Dark Sire Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Friday Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction, and South Broadway Ghost Society. When she is not working, reading, or writing, she is hanging out with her dogs Olive and Charlifer, watching movies, and playing video games.
FIELD NOTES TEAM
Lizeth De La Luz
Senior Field Notes Editor
Lizeth De La Luz (she/they) is a poet, writer, editor and educator from California. She holds a Creative Writing degree from Chapman University and is pursuing an MFA and MA degree at San Francisco State University. She writes about the frustration of language barriers, learned barriers, anxieties of living/loving/grieving in a Mexican body and is always searching for home as she crafts bits of life on the page. Her work can be found in City Works, Short Vine, Folio, Calliope, and Transfer magazine.
ART, MUSIC, & REVIEWS
Jonathon Hinojosa
Chief of Design
Jonathon Hinojosa is a multidisciplinary artist. He was born in Edinburg, TX, but spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Latin America. He earned his bachelor's degree in drama from Trinity University. He has had poems published in the San Antonio Express News and an anthology. He has focused on a wide range of arts through the years, but lately has been concentrating on printmaking techniques, alternative photographic processes, and some woodworking. He draws most of his inspiration from nature, emotion, and the blending of cultures he grew up in. He currently lives in Grass Valley, California with his wife and children.
Elliot Eatinger
Book Reviewer
Elliot Eatinger is a writer currently based in New York City (with homes in both California and Texas), presently doing COVID safety work with Broadway, and a little bit of everything too - including reviewing books! They received their BA in Theatre Arts (CSU San Bernardino) and MFA in Playwriting (Actors Studio Drama School), and that gave them an excuse to read more and more with every passing year. They are an anxiety-prone horror lover, excited about new literature and theatre around every corner, and are constantly trying to think of new ways to define anything they write. Recent credits include: Rockford New Words 2022 (Poetry); Actors Studio Drama School, One Minute Play Festival (Theatre). Current projects include: reading a whole lot more, and trying to write a lot more.