Table of Contents

Leslie Benigni is a writer, artist, and teacher from Pitts- burgh, PA. Graduated from the Bowling Green State University MFA program, her work revolves around nature, family dynamics, psychology, and philosophy. Her work has been featured in Permafrost Magazine, ANTAE, Tint Journal, ANMLY, and more.

Ginny Brown is a paralegal and writer based in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.With more than thirty years of experience in civil and domestic litigation, she has spent her professional life bringing clarity to complex narratives. Her writing reflects that same focus, explor- ing resilience, memory, and the spaces between leav- ing and returning through grounded, accessible prose.

Floyd Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Twentieth-Century Literature from the Uni- versity of Arkansas. He has authored several volumes of poetry, including My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems (2022). The Living Artifact, a selection of his essay-re- views, appeared in 2021. Most recently Waking Past Midnight: Selected Poems, a career retrospective, was published by Stephen F. Austin State UP in 2023.

Janelle Collins is Professor of English at Arkansas State University and Managing Editor of Arkansas Rev- ciew. The author of numerous scholarly articles, she is the editor of Defining the Delta: Multidisciplinary Persepectives on the Lower Mississippi River Delta (U of Arkansas P, 2015).

Paul A. Crutcher is Associate Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He re- searches and teaches about popular culture, religion and ethics, K-12 and higher education, and East Asia.

A. Z. Foreman is a linguist, poet, short story author, and/or translator pursuing a doctorate at the Ohio State University. His work has been featured in the Threepenny Review, Rattle, ANMLY, Poet Lore, and else- where including two people’s tattoos but not yet the Starfleet Academy Quarterly or Tattooine Monthly. He writes from the edge of thought between sleep and waking. He wants to pet your dog.

Gregory Hansen is Professor of Folklore and English at Arkansas State University where he also teaches in the Heritage Studies PhD Program. He recently co- edited Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage and he has published on roots music, public folklore, and a range of topics. He recently was inducted as a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

Patricia Hesse is an award-winning educator and writer. Over a 47-year career in education, she devel- oped story-centered learning experiences that ex- tended beyond the classroom into community-based projects. After retiring from teaching, she drew to- gether years of collected stories, documents, and ques- tions into a sustained study of local history. She is particularly interested in how everyday lives shape identity and the continuity of community.

Sam Jackson is Professor of English at Tyler Junior College. He holds an MFA from UA Monticello, and his work often explores the intersection of place, labor, and identity. Most recently, his work has ap- peared in Shakespearean Sonnets.

Rachel Layton is a writer from Memphis, TN. She re- ceived her MFA from the University of Missouri-Kan- sas City where she worked as an editorial intern with New Letters and a writer at Kansas City Magazine. She

Jianqing Zheng has published poems in Arkansas Re- view, Mississippi Review, The Southern Quarterly, and Birmingham Poetry Review. His recent poetry collections include Dreaminations (Madville, 2026) and Visual Chords (Broken Tribe, 2025). He has received three Mississippi Arts Commission poetry fellowships. Lucille “Mama Ceal” Hatch Eldridge and daughter LaRuth. Newcastle, Arkansas, ca. late 1940s. Photograph courtesy of Walter Pryor. See book review of his memoir, This Leaves Me Okay, in this issue.