Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel Chulito(Magnus Books 2011) has received nearly a dozen awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association and a “Small Press Highlights” mention from the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture/Lethe Press 2011) and his award-winning play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology (Duke Press 2016). He serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.

 

Michael Montlack is the author of the poetry collection Cool Limbo (NYQ Books) and the editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press). His work recently appeared in Cimarron Review, Barrow Street, Mudfish, The Cortland Review and Assaracus. He lives and teaches in New York City and has been awarded residencies/fellowships from VCCA, Ucross, Lambda Literary Foundation and Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Germany.

 

Carol Rosenfeld is a New York City-based writer and poet. Her short stories have appeared in several lesbian erotica and LGBT horror anthologies. Her debut novel, The One That Got Away, is being published in June 2015.

Ely Shipley’s first book, Boy with Flowers, won the Barrow Street Press book prize judged by Carl Phillips, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His chapbook, On Beards: A Memoir of Passing, is forthcoming from speCt! books. His poems and essays appear in the Western Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, Florida Review, Phoebe, Greensboro Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Witness, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Fugue, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD from the University of Utah. He is an Assistant Professor at Baruch College, CUNY.