Artwork © Joe Tsambiras
The Letters Festival believes in the power of independent literature and is committed to increasing its role in Atlanta’s rich artistic culture. The Letters Festival is a program of Lostintheletters, an Atlanta-based literary organization which also hosts an award-winning reading series and will soon unveil quarterly writing workshops.
Aria Curtis is an Iranian and American writer from Atlanta. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southeast Review, The Offing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Yemassee, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first novel.
Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including the Academy of American Poets, Tupelo Quarterly, The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, pluck!, and many more. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, 2nd Vice President and Membership Chair of the AWC, co-coordinator of the Nitty Gritty Magic City Reading Series, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
Berry Grass has lived in rural Missouri, Tuscaloosa, and now Philadelphia. They are the author of Hall of Waters (forthcoming from The Operating System, 2019). Their essays & poems appear in DIAGRAM, The Normal School, Barrelhouse, and Sonora Review, among other publications. They host Tragic: the Gathering -- an occasional transgender literature reading series in Philadelphia. When they aren't reading submissions as Nonfiction Editor of Sundog Lit, they are embodying what happens when a Virgo watches too much professional wrestling.
Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey & has taught at the University of Alabama since receiving his M.F.A. in 2009. He has a B.A. in English from Loyola University-Maryland & was the recipient of the Buford Boone Fellowship during his time at Alabama. His work has been anthologized in Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 2, 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction, The &Now Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing 2011-2013, An Essay Daily Reader, It Was Written, Working Stiff, Continue? The Boss Fight Books Anthology among others. His work has been twice selected as a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays series as well as nominated over ten times for a Pushcart Prize.
Caren Beilin is the author of a novel, The University of Pennsylvania (Noemi Press, 2014), a memoir, SPAIN (Rescue Press, 2018) and a forthcoming nonfiction book on women's health, Blackfishing the IUD (Wolfman Books, 2019). Her shorter prose appears in Fence, LA Review of Books, The Offing, and Territory. Her essays and reviews can be found at www.full-stop.net, a literary site devoted to small press publishing and for which she serves as an editor. She lives in North Adams, MA, where she teaches creative writing at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Carmen Maria Machado's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the World Fantasy Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."
Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Tin House, VQR, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
Erica Dawson is the author of three books of poetry: When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, forthcoming September 2018); The Small Blades Hurt (Measure Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Poets’ Prize, and Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser Press, 2007), winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Barrow Street; Bennington Review; three editions of Best American Poetry; Crazyhorse; Harvard Review; Rebellion; Resistance; Life: 50 Poems Now; the Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses; Virginia Quarterly Review; and numerous other journals and anthologies. She lives in Tampa, Florida, and is an associate professor at University of Tampa, where she also directs the low-residency MFA program.
Jeff Jackson's second novel Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel was just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It received advanced praise from Don DeLillo, Janet Fitch, Ben Marcus, Dana Spiotta, and Dennis Cooper. His first novel Mira Corpora was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and featured on numerous "Best of 2013" lists, including Slate, Salon, and Flavorwire. His novella Novi Sad was published as a limited edition art book and selected for “Best of 2016” lists in Vice, Lit Reactor, and Entropy. As a playwright, six of his plays have been produced by the Obie Award-winning Collapsable Giraffe company in New York City. The New York Times selected his play Botanica as "one of the most galvanizing theater experiences of 2012." Dream of the Red Chamber: Performance for a Sleeping Audience, an adaptation of the epic Chinese novel, debuted in Times Square in 2014 to rave reviews. His short fiction has appeared in Vice, The Common, and The Collagist. He also writes songs and performs with the band Julian Calendar.
Kory Oliver lives in Atlanta, GA. His poems have appeared in Scalawag, Fanzine, and Everyday Genius, among other publications. He is currently completing his first collection of poetry, forthcoming from Publishing Genius in late 2018.
Mark Leidner is the author of several books, mostly recently Under the Sea, a collection of short stories published in 2018 by Tyrant Books. He also wrote the movie Empathy, Inc., sci-fi thriller currently screening at festivals worldwide. His books of poetry include The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover and Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me. He resides in Atlanta and teaches at Elms College.
Meredith Blankinship lives in Atlanta, GA. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of the chapbook Sexual Civilian (Epigraph Magazine). Her poems have appeared in NOÖ, Beecher's, Heavy Feather Review, GlitterMob, Sink Review, and Finery, among others. She collaborates with the artist Dana Haugaard on Heat Rituals, a multi-medium project.
Molly Brodak is the author of A Little Middle of the Night (winner of the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize) and Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir (Grove Atlantic, 2016) along with 3 chapbooks of poetry. She has received fellowships from Emory University and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sabrina Orah Mark's first collection of stories, Wild Milk, was recently published by Dorothy. She is also the author of the poetry collections The Babies and Tsim Tsum. Mark’s awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She has taught at Agnes Scott College, University of Georgia, Rutgers University, University of Iowa, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Goldwater Hospital and throughout the New York City and Iowa Public School Systems. She lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons.
Tommy "Teebs" Pico is a poet from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, currently residing in Brooklyn. He's author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, Feed (forthcoming from Tin House Books, 2019), and myriad keen tweets including "sittin on the cock of the gay." With Morgan Parker he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA), co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. @heyteebs
