Tianna Ebnet is a Fiction MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she serves as a writing tutor. She primarily writes genre fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. As a lifelong and self-proclaimed nerd, her interests primarily revolve around engaging with stories, whether they be books, movies, podcasts, or video games, and then talking about them.
Brennan, Sarah Rees, In Other Lands
Chambers, Becky, Record of a Spaceborn Few
Polk, C.L., Witchmark
Samatar, Sofia, Monster Portraits
Shaw, Vivian, Dreadful Company
Garner is a body positive, queer identifying, spoken word poet, and Mom from Houston, Texas. She is an MFA poetry candidate at Minnesota State University. Her writing and visual art can be found in Out.Smart Magazine, Spectrum South, and Glass Mountain Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @artkgarner and on Instagram @garner.poetry.
Engel, Laura Eve, Things That Go
Liz Lanier is an MFA Fiction candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she also teaches undergraduate composition. Her writing can be found at Variety, Polygon, The Mary Sue, Game Informer Magazine, Verily Mag, and GameDaily. Liz is also the Creative Nonfiction Editor of the Blue Earth Review. She is obsessed with narrative and the craft of writing in all forms, from books to podcasts to video games. Connect with her on Twitter @LizLanierWrites.
Chen, Mike, Here and Now and Then
Dreyer, Benjamin, Dreyer’s English
Eskens, Allen, The Life We Bury and The Shadows We Hide
Fajardo-Anstine, Kali, Sabrina & Corina
Kunz, Edgar, Tap Out
Landvik, Lorna Chronicles of a Radical Hag: With Recipes
Orland, Kyle, The Game Beat
Pane, Salvatore, The Theory of Almost Everything
Tilney, Alexander The Expectations
Wortman, Jennifer, This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love.
Lorna Pecard is an MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she teaches English Composition. She writes mostly poetry, and serves as both poetry editor and social media editor for Blue Earth Review. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lorna has very high cheese curd standards.
Barton, Tyler, The Quiet Part Loud
Dorney, Erin, I Am Not Famous Anymore
Dregni, Eric, You’re Sending Me Where?
Herbach, Geoff, Hooper
Huang, Nancy, Favorite Daughter
Homer, Nicole, Pecking Order
Guenette, Matthew, Vasectomania
Mauch, Matt, Bird Brain
Scarano, Caitlin, Do Not Bring Him Water
Sotelo, Analicia Virgin
Connor Poff is an MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She writes poetry and reads anything. When she isn’t writing, she teaches composition, serves as a poetry reader for Blue Earth Review, and binge-listens to true crime podcasts. Always native to the Great Lakes region, she grew up as a steelworker’s daughter in Middletown, Ohio.
Carlson-Wee, Anders, The Low Passions
Dakota Van Linden is a Creative Non-Fiction MFA candidate, as well as an Anthropology MS student at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a transplant from Marquette, Michigan. Even though she misses Lake Superior sometimes, Dakota loves hiking and biking all over her new state! When she isn’t outdoors, she can often be found reading or watching old science-fiction shows.
Baker, Matthew, Hybrid Creatures
Benedict, Helen, Wolf Season
Berry, TJ, Space Unicorn Blues
Clark, P. Djeli, The Black God’s Drums
Clark, P. Djeli, The Haunting of Tramcar 015
Carey, M.R., Someone Like Me
DeSaunders, Diane, Hap and Hazard and the End of the World
Duncan, Rod, The Outlaw and the Upstart King
Duncan, Rod, The Queen of All Crows
Haynes, Paul, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
Jacobs, John Hornor, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky
Mancilla, Dan, All the Proud Fathers
Manning, Joe, Certain Relevant Passages
Morena, Anthony Michael The Voyager Record: A Transmission
Murphy, Nora, White Birch, Red Hawthorn
Obejas, Achy, The Tower of the Antilles
O’Dell, Claire, A Study in Honor
Otis, Abbey Mei, Alien Virus Love Disaster
Pratt, Tim, The Dreaming Stars
Rossner, Rena, the Sisters of the Winter Wood
Skinner, Woody, A Thousand Distant Radios
Suri, Tasha, Empire of Sand
Wells, Martha, Exit Strategy
Editing
Natalie Martell is an MFA student at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She mostly writes young adult fiction, but also dabbles in poetry, nature writing, and melodramatic song lyrics. She loves bees, playing music with people, and being near trees.
Guenette, Matthew, Vasectomania
Shaw, Vivian, Dreadful Company
Past Hosts & Editors
Benjamin Allocco
Benjamin received his MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2013 and hosted the Weekly Reader from 2011-2013. He now teaches at SUNY Oswego.
Tyler Barton
Tyler Barton is a graduate of the creative writing program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His short stories have been published in Passages North, Waxwing, NANO Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, Little Fiction, and No Tokens. Find him at tsbarton.com or @goftyler.
Alec Cicak
Alec is a writer from Indianapolis. He is responsible for writing and directing two of the worst feature-length motion pictures ever produced. He has lived in many places and visited even more. He prefers those places that have a wide variety of restaurants that are open at three in the morning. His lowly genre fiction has appeared in numerous publications. A few respectable (read: literary) journals have published his more socially acceptable work as well. He is the founding editor of the online crime fiction blog All Due Respect and is the founder and current editor of the print journal, Pulp Modern.
Gustavo Cruz
Gustavo Cruz is a fiction and creative nonfiction writer from Nebraska. He was an MFA student at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Michael Dusek
Michael Dusek was previously an MA student and a Graduate Instructor at Minnesota State University. He hails from the sprawling countryside of Western Wisconsin. His interest in literature stems from the complexity of human interaction and coexistence. He enjoys travel, music, art, and being outdoors.
Amy Fladeboe
Amy received her MFA from MSU Mankato in 2013 and hosted the Weekly Reader from 2011-2013. She now teaches at Century College.
Jessica Guess
Jessica Guess studied fiction at Minnesota State University, Mankato where she also taught English Composition. A South Florida native, she spends her free time musing and cursing this interesting yet annoying substance called snow and reading fiction about stranger (and warmer) places. She also enjoys writing stories about the kind of women you would see featured on an episode of Snapped. Her work has been featured in Luna Station Quarterly and Mused BellaOnline Literary Review.
Christopher David Hopkins
Christopher David Hopkins is a poet from North Carolina who previously studied in Minnesota State Mankato’s MFA program.
Lissa Horneber
Lissa Horneber is an MFA graduate who usually writes nonfiction. Her primary goals currently include (in no particular order): writing, teaching, traveling, talking to people, learning Chinese, climbing Kilimanjaro, understanding cars, mastering economics, discovering the Meaning of Life, investing in a bookshelf, among others.
Kyle Jaeger
Kyle is a former graduate student in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He tutors Somali students, worked as a graduate assistant, and has been a teaching artist at the Loft Literacy Center in Minneapolis. Though he is presently working on a book of poems, he hopes to work in various genres and also across multiple mediums, including audio/radio.
Emily Johnson
Emily Johnson is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato where her focus was creative nonfiction. She served as the 2016-18 Creative Nonfiction editor of Blue Earth Review literary magazine and is a submissions reader for Creative Nonfiction Magazine. She is the cat momma of her fluffy feline, Cal.
Alexis Klemetson
Alexis Klemetson previously studied poetry at Minnesota State University, Mankato where she also served as a reader for the Blue Earth Review. She is Minnesotan through and through, which means her home town of Thief River Falls is actually the most Minnesotan town, unless you disagree. She enjoys reading and thinking about literature, hiking with her four-legged fur-child, and spending time with the guy she met at the hockey supply store.
Teagan Knoblich
Teagan Knoblich is a former MFA graduate student of Minnesota State Mankato. She writes genre YA fiction and likes to dabble with shorter flash pieces. She was born and raised in Minnesota with a healthy amount of fishing, winter jackets, and Swedish relatives. Her interests include fencing, crafting, painting, video games, dressing up as a pirate, and discussing fantastical things.
Jake Little
Jacob Little is a former MFA student and Graduate Instructor at Minnesota State University. He came of age on the hard, suburban streets of Fenton, Missouri, and enjoys writing poetry, television, and complete nonsense. He was awoken to a love of poetry upon hearing David Clewell read Richard Hugo’s “Death of the Kapowsin Tavern.” He specializes in teaching his students the art of semicolons. His work has been featured in Ampersand and Green Fuse, and he has won a Robert C. Wright Award as well as recognition in the St. Louis Poetry in Motion contest.
Dylan Loring
Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa who previously studied at Minnesota State’s MFA program and best associates with the Jamie’s Basement School. When he is not writing, he is listening to punk rock music, engaging in conversations about the quotidian, and watching crappy comedy movies.
Kate MacLam
Kate MacLam was previously an MFA graduate student at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She is an eighth-generation Vermonter but will settle in any town with a railroad. Her interests include but are not limited to pottery, Montreal, knitting, food, hiking, beer, minicomics, and arm-wrestling.
Claire Moran
Claire Moran is a former MFA candidate in the Creative Writing program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She writes creative non-fiction and poetry. Claire is from Boston, Massachusetts, has previously lived in Montreal and evidently prefers to live in places that start with M. Her interests include hanging out with the dog at the party and wandering around hospitals. (She knows this is weird.) She wishes Minnesota would get an ocean.
Beth Mouw
Beth is a former graduate student at Minnesota State University in Mankato. She is currently a tutor and substitute teacher for the Education Department. She loves writing fiction and non-fiction, but there are things she loves even more—people, people-watching, eating food (with people or alone), looking for cool rocks, looking at eye colors, and storms, to name a few. Beth has written a YA novel and is moderately hard at work brainstorming another.
Dan Porter
Dan Porter is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Selina Scheumann
Selina Scheumann is an MFA candidate in fiction at MNSU, Mankato and
hails from a city in Indiana that, for some reason, she can’t use adjectives
to describe. She is a bad blusher and laughs at the weird jokes she makes up
in her head but never says out loud. Her interests include things like
dreaming about Iceland, reading poetry, rewatching Little Miss Sunshine,
and having adventures.
Thomas Warmbrodt
Thomas Warmbrodt is a poet candidate in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Jakob Westphal
Jakob Westphal is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Michelle Zamanian
Michelle Zamanian is a former MFA candidate from Southwest Missouri. She specializes in fiction and screenwriting. She believes in bad movies, obscure comedies and adorable cats.