Michael J. Sanders, Fiction Editor
Michael J. Sanders, if that is his real name, is a writer, artist, and educator. He has published fiction, multimedia writing, poetry, and criticism under various Kierkegaardian heteronyms.
Sara Brenes Akerman, Fiction Editor
Sara Brenes Akerman is a writer, an amateur historian of lunch, and an aspiring Frank Sinatra impersonator. She holds an MFA in fiction from NYU and is currently an English PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is trying to finally finish that dissertation. She once published a story about being in love with historian Robert Caro in The Brooklyn Review.
S. Yarberry, Poetry Editor
S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared in AGNI, Tin House, Indiana Review, Redivider, jubilat, Notre Dame Review, The Boiler, among others. Their other writings can be found in Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, Bomb Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. S. has their MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and is now a PhD candidate in Poetry & Poetics at Northwestern University. Their first book, A Boy in the City, was published by Deep Vellum in 2022.
Temperance Aghamohammadi, Poetry Reader
Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Iranian-American poet, occultist, and anthropologist from Connecticut. Their work appears in Meridian, The Missouri Review, Bear Review, and elsewhere. Temperance is currently an MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis.
David Ehmcke, Poetry Reader
David Ehmcke is an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. He was selected by Diane Seuss as the runner-up for the 2022 Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Adroit Journal, Peripheries, Hobart, Cosmonauts Avenue, Deluge, The Columbia Review, and elsewhere.
Jae Kim, Translation Editor
Jae Kim is a writer and translator whose work appears in Conjunctions, NOON, Poetry, and Granta. His translations have received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Literature Translation Institute of Korea. His book Cold Candies: Selected Poems of Lee Young-ju (Black Ocean, 2021) is the winner of 2022 Lucien Stryk Prize.
Villain Ari, Contributing Artist
Villain Ari is an artist, writer and director of Life in the Bubble, a documentary film about complex illness releasing in 2024. Villain Ari displays her practice live on platforms such as Twitch and Youtube, demonstrating blind contour and surrealistic drawing, creating works that show the wrongdoings of dehumanization towards disabled bodies. Being disabled does not mean incapable. Villain Ari is an artist who happens to have disabilities.
Nadia Arioli, Contributing Artist
Nadia Arioli is the founder and editor-in-chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. A four-time Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, Arioli’s poetry, artwork, and essays can be found in Rust + Moth, Pithead Chapel, Hunger Mountain, Mom Egg Review, Permafrost, and elsewhere. Arioli’s latest collections are with Dancing Girl and Kelsay Books.
Jā. R. Macki, Contributing Artist
Jā. R. Macki is the author of Linus Baby (Pie Face Child Press, 2023). Her digital collage pieces “After Death Communications” and “Donut Shop” are exhibiting online at Red Noise Collective’s “Noise” exhibit with prints for sale. Her essays have appeared in midnight & indigo and Skink Beat Review. She lives in Chicagoland with her wife and senior pets. Instagram: macki_jae.are
Emily Rankin, Contributing Artist
Emily Rankin was born in Riverside, California, and attended university in Texas, where she received a BFA in 2011. Her body of work deals with the tangles of human emotion and understanding, the intuitive messages of dreaming and subconscious exploration. Her work has appeared in such publications as Gasher, Wild Roof Journal, Meat for Tea, Black Fox, and Rattle. She is currently based in New Mexico.
Beata Stasak, Contributing Artist
Beata Stasak is an Art and Eastern European Languages Teacher from Eastern Europe with upgraded teaching degrees in Early Childhood and Education Support Education. She teaches in the South Perth Metropolitan area. After further study in Counselling for Drug and Alcohol Addiction, she has used her skills in Perth Counselling Services. Beata has been a farm caretaker on the organic olive farm in the South Perth Metropolitan area for the past twenty years. Beata is a migrant from post-communist Eastern Europe, who settled in Perth, Western Australia in 1994. She came with her husband and children to meet her father, who she never knew. He was a dissident and refugee from Czechoslovakia, after his country was taken over by Russian communists after the unsuccessful uprising against the communists in 1968.
Beaumont Sugar, Contributing Artist
Beaumont Sugar is an essayist, painter, and poet. Their piece “Sheepdog, Standing in the Rain” was nominated for Best of the Net, and they won The Forge‘s creative nonfiction contest in 2022 with “That Car Salesman Knew My Sister.” More of their paintings can be found in Red Ogre Review and Cream City Review. They’re doing the best they can. Instagram: beaumontsugar
Donna Vorreyer, Contributing Artist
Donna Vorreyer creates and writes in the Chicago area and hosts the online reading series “A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.” She is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016), and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her art is featured in North American Review, Waxwing, Thimble Literary Magazine, Pithead Chapel, The Boiler, and other journals.
Cynthia Yatchman, Contributing Artist
Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle-based artist and art instructor. A former ceramicist, she received her B.F.A. in painting (UW). She switched from 3D to 2D and has remained there ever since. She works primarily on paintings, prints, and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections. She has exhibited on both coasts, extensively in the Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, SPU, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers, and the Pacific Science Center. She is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association and COCA (Center of Contemporary Art).
Ying Zhao, Contributing Artist
Ying Zhao is a writer and photographer. Her photography series “Silence” has been exhibited at the Belt and Road Traditional Art Exhibition. Her work can be found in the Upper Mississippi Harvest Literary and Arts Journal, the Santa Clara Review, and the Salmon Creek Journal. She is currently writing a collection of mystery short stories.
Editorial Interns
Eric Boles
Jenna Burke
Anika Busick
Kayla Guzman
Katie Holland
Brooklyn Hollander
Alexia McCullison
Kasey Noss
Kendall Owens
Emma Sheldon
Tessa Siminou
Emily Woodruff
Senior Managing Editor, Faculty Advisor
Heather McPherson
Advisory Board
Rhiannon Amato
David Schuman
Abram Van Engen
Cass Donish, Editor Emeritus
Cass Donish is the author of the poetry collections The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Their nonfiction chapbook On the Mezzanine (2019) was selected by Maggie Nelson as winner of the Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition.
Kelly Caldwell (1988-2020), Founding Editor
The Spectacle was founded by trans poet, writer, artist, and scholar Kelly Caldwell, who co-edited the magazine with her partner, Cass Donish. Kelly’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Entropy, Fence, Mississippi Review, The Missouri Review, Phoebe, Seneca Review, MAKE Magazine, Slant, Pacific Standard Magazine, The Rumpus, VICE, and elsewhere. Kelly was the winner of the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize and the Cornelison English Award from Washington University in St. Louis, the winner of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and the winner of the 2019 Greg Grummer Prize, judged by Jos Charles. To learn more about Kelly’s life and work, please read our memorial feature and visit her website.