Biographies

NICO AMADOR | POETRY Nico Amador’s poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Unbound, Bettering American Poetry, Poem-a-Day, PANK, Pleiades, The Cortland Review, Hypertext Review, The Visible Poetry Project and elsewhere. His chapbook, Flower Wars, was selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound Press in 2017. He is a grant recipient from the Vermont Arts Council, an alumnus of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Writers Retreat, and a reader at the New England Review.

CLARESSINKA ANDERSON | POETRY Claressinka Anderson’s poetry and essays have appeared in Autre Magazine, Chiron Review, bedfellows, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books, 2020). Through her ongoing collaborations with artists, her work engages the interstitial spaces of contemporary art and literature. During her time at Bennington, she wrote her first libretto. Born and raised in London, she lives in Los Angeles and dreams about rain.

LOGAN ROYCE BEITMEN | FICTION Logan Royce Beitmen studied art and experimental poetry at BardCollegeandfictionatBenningtonCollege.Asaprofessional art writer, Beitmen has interviewed and written about the work of numerous contemporary artists, including Donald Baechler, Petra Collins, Irvin Pascal, Raymond Pettibon, Julian Schnabel, Rachel Rossin, and Wendy White. He is currently working on his first novel, a book about filmmaking and revolution.

RICHARD BRAIT | POETRY Richard Brait is a corporate lawyer living in Toronto. Richard’s poetry has been published, or is forthcoming, in TickleAce, The Queen’s Quarterly, EVENT Magazine, The New Quarterly, Exile Quarterly and The Dalhousie Review. He was shortlisted for the Fish Anthology’s Lockdown Prize in 2020 and is the 2021 winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition for Emerging Writers. Richard’s recent blog post for The New Quarterly describes his reading and writing experience at Bennington: https://tnq.ca/richard-braits-writing-space.

KELI FLYNN DAVIDSON | FICTION Kelly Flynn Davidson is a 2022 graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and also has a BA in English from The University of Texas at Austin. She is working on a novel about some untoward and amiss characters, and the horses who redeemed them. She will miss the smell of the fields that lead to the Bennington barn lectures.

SUSAN DINES | POETRY Susan lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two turtles, and Australian Shepherd. Her daughters have recently relocated to Seattle and Truckee, California, the motivation behind her next adventure, which involves a conversion van, the husband, the turtles, the dog, and an extensive road trip. Dines’ work has appeared in Poems from the Lockdown by Willowdown Books, Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art, Eclipse Lit, and SLAB. Her poetry has placed in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards Writing Competition and shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize.

MICHELE FEENEY | FICTION/NONFICTION Michele Feeney lives in Phoenix and Michigan, and has been married to her husband Matt since 1984. They have five children and two grandchildren. Michele has practiced law since 1983, mostly in the area of Alternative Dispute Resolution and in academic positions at the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law. After a couple of decades of taking writing classes and attending conferences, Michele was happy to accept an offer of admission from Bennington to begin her MFA in January 2020.

CLAUDIA SIMONE FRANKLIN | NONFICTION/POETRY Claudia Simone Franklin was born in Peru to German parents. She is a late bloomer. English is her third language; to master it has taken a lifetime. Although she speaks it with an accent, she teaches English. These days, she lives in Miami. She is finishing a collection of lyric texts that struggle to articulate the indelible effect of war not only on her family but on the act of narration.

KERRI GOERS | NONFICTION Kerri Goers is a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner at the University of Iowa and mother of three, who thought 2020 would be the perfect year to embark on an exploration of nonfiction with the Bennington Writing Seminars. Thanks largely to her fellow students and the writing faculty at Bennington, she has not come to regret this decision. Her work has previously been published in The Examined Life Journal. It’s been an honor to travel this road with all of you.

MEIKO KO | FICTION Meiko Ko’s works have been published by the Blue Lyra Review, the Hayden’s Ferry Review, the AAWW, The Margins, The Literary Review, the Columbia Journal, Epiphany, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Litro Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Five:2: One Magazine, Breadcrumbs Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Scoundrel Time (Pushcart Prize nomination), failbetter, Juked and elsewhere; some of her reviews can be found at Tupelo Quarterly, Entropy. She was a finalist for the 2020 Puerto del Sol Contest for prose and has been long listed for the Home is Elsewhere Anthology 2017 Berlin Writing Prize.

PATRICIA MARTIN | NONFICTION Patricia Martin is a non-fiction writer, podcaster and researcher who studies the people and ideas that change the culture. While at Bennington, she completed her fourth book. She works in Chicago and lives in the woods of Michiana with her husband and countless deer.

MICHAEL MARTINEC | POETRY Michael Martinec is a poet trying not to drown under ever increasing debt. He lives in Austin, Texas.

KRYSIA WAZNY MCCLAIN | POETRY Krysia Wazny McClain spends most of her time writing poems, organizing for racial justice, and editing academic texts. She also likes to dance and photograph piles of dishes in drying racks. Born and raised in Southwest Florida, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two cats. Her work has appeared in Porridge Magazine and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s Ekphrastic Gallery and is forthcoming in Disobedient Futures, an anthology from the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.

GINA FALLAS-RODRIGUEZ | FICTION Gina Fallas-Rodriguez was born and currently lives in Boston, MA with her two visually impaired dogs. She has worked as a wine manager, a high school teacher, and a tarot card reader. When not writing, working on music, or reading tarot cards she can be found wandering around aimlessly while trying to tame her inner-rapscallion and hiding from responsibility.

LUCY FAYE ROSENTHAL | FICTION Lucy’s work has appeared in Hobart, Bridge Eight Press, and the Vassar Student Review, among others. She reads tarot, cuts her own hair, and is really good at making U-turns.

JAMES ROSEMAN | FICTION James Roseman was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, raised outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and currently resides in Dublin, Ireland. He is most interested in short fiction with strong Jewish themes and is working towards his first collection of stories.

STEPHANIE SELLARS | NONFICTION Stephanie Sellars is a New York-based writer, filmmaker, and performer. She holds an MFA in film from Columbia University and a BA from Gettysburg College. Her writing has been published in Entropy, Moviemaker, and the former alt-weekly New York Press. Her films have won awards and screened at many festivals and her debut feature film Lust Life Love was released in 2021 on VOD platforms. Other accomplishments include residencies at Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center and the 2020 release of her jazz vocal album Girl Who Loves, available wherever music is sold online. By the time this journal goes to print, she will have an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars! www.stephaniesellars.com