Khalilah Boone

Khalilah Boone - Khalilah writes about those screaming from the margins of history to be heard-- the voices ignored or suppressed by the oppressed. Her fiction is usually set in ancient historical times like the 1980s or the 1720s and involves some sort of transnational migration experience like moving from New York to another state in the union or from the Congo to New France. She likes to talk theory,or at least make up stories in conversation with contemporary gender and race theory. She can often be found writing in the room of her own, a romantically lit coffee shop or on a patch of grass. She has a love/hate/okay--resigned to acceptance relationship with her homeland...New York City. Blacksburg is quite literally a breath of unmitigated fresh air. B.A., Columbia University, NYC (2008); M.F.A. Fiction,Virginia Tech (2012). She is a Jacob K. Javits Fellow (2009-2012)

When not composing clever bios, Sean Conaway keeps busy scribbling tall tales, fables, and outright fabrications.  Convinced that make-believe is needed for a well balanced diet, he is thrilled to know that pirates still roam, because for every villain in the world we create a hero.  He lives in Blacksburg, VA, where he is currently deciding whether the word fire is more incendiary than the actual phenomenon..

Mark Derks has lived within an hour of Lake Michigan for his entire life.  He studied fiction writing at Western Michigan University, and while he was studying, hefted boulders and pianos and gun safes and hammers and shovels and plates of hot food for a living.  When he wasn't hefting things, he wrote about hefting them and the other people that hefted with him, as well as the people he happened to think he was in love with at the time of the hefting.  That's where most of his stories have come from.  A romance with heavy lifting and the shores of Lake Michigan.  Mundane concerns perhaps, but—he hopes—not wholly uninteresting.

I am a Philadelphia native and 2008 graduate of Loyola College, where I received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing and Music. My work had appeared in Loyola’s publications The Garland and Warnings. In addition, my poetry has been published in Poet’s Ink, apt, and Gargoyle. A Mother Is…, my self-published chapbook is available from Lulu.com (Hint, hint).

Before enrolling at Virginia Tech, I prided myself in developing a career in arts management, volunteering and working for organizations such as The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Baltimore Jazz Alliance. I'll return, someday, if that tenure-track professorship doesn't come through.

I play clarinet and saxophone. I love food, jazz, trashy reality TV, mixed drinks, and poetry. While at Tech, I wish to figure out the secret to fiction writing -- and write poetry.

Robert Kenagy

I’m a Midwesterner – a nasal-voiced, thick-skinned Cubs fan.  I prefer fishing to most things, and have had a few close calls while driving and trying to identify birds.  I write and record music as Ganges, and wish I could cook.  Past jobs include park ranger, bartender, farmer’s market peddler, and one day as a lampshade factory handyman.  I write poems

Elias Simpson

I'm a student in poet's clothing.
Iowa is my home. Some day it may be "America,"
   or "France," or Earth.
I would like to swim in a river.
As for my clothes, my parents bought them;
I don't wear glasses or contacts.
I wonder where is the market for tiny buttons
   and used toasters, or has everyone else already collected them?
My poetry is the fractions of whole turns of skipped stones,
the milk on a cat's tongue.
My favorite candy is licorice.
Leave a loan, I'll pay you back.

Amanda Zubillaga

Amanda Zubillaga grew up in Tampa, Florida and studied English at the University of Florida. Before coming to Virginia Tech, she spent three years in Los Angeles working on films, commercials, and the like. She's been an actress, a film set decorator, a Congressional intern, an online movie critic, and an onstage assistant to a burlesque dancer, though not in that order. She is currently at work on a screenplay and some short stories, and she hopes they turn out to be good.