Loft Spotlights

Robin McLean was a lawyer and then a potter before receiving her MFA at UMass Amherst in Massachusetts. Her first short story collection Reptile House won the BOA Fiction Prize, was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize, and was named a best book of 2015 in Paris Review.

Savannah Brooks earned her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and, while doing so, dabbled in all things publishing. In 2018, she finally managed to narrow it down to working as an associate agent for the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, where she gets to fawn over kid lit.

Rachel Zarrow's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Literature, BUST, Bon Appétit, Epiphany, the Atlantic, and the Coachella Review. She is a creative writing instructor at Polyphony Lit and a graduate of the MFA program at UC Riverside Palm Desert.

Moheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest. He has presented writing, performance, installation, and video work at diverse literary, art, and public spaces in the US and Canada with support from the Banff Centre, Pillsbury House, the Joyce Foundation, and more.

Chelsea B. DesAutels is the author of A Dangerous Place (Sarabande Books 2021). Her work appears in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, Adroit Journal, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. Chelsea received an MFA from the University of Houston.

Pacyinz Lyfoung is a French-born, Hmong American woman poet. She currently resides in Washington, DC; however, she is Minnesota-grown, especially in her poetry. She has published in several journals and anthologies and is still working on her first poetry manuscript.

Emily Lee Luan is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist. She is the author of I Watch the Boughs (2021), selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She holds an MFA in poetry from Rutgers University-Newark.

Margaret Yapp is from Iowa City, Iowa. Her poems and essays have appeared in Peach Mag, Apartment Poetry, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. Margaret is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she teaches literature to college students.

Saba Keramati is a multiracial writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds degrees in English and creative writing from University of Michigan and UC Davis. She has worked as a creative writing instructor, editor, literary magazine reader, and dramaturge.

Elizabeth Bluth is a writer of fiction, poetry, and plays. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in LIT Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, VERSIFICATION, Emerge Literary Journal, and others. She has served as a graduate teaching fellow at the New School.

Tamara Hogan is the award-winning author of The Underbelly Chronicles paranormal romance series. Both traditionally and indie-published, Tamara has broad industry knowledge and is a frequent writing conference instructor and speaker.

Jack Harris is a fiction MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato who also holds degrees in creative writing and graphic design. He has previously served as co-editor-in-chief of SAGA Art & Literary Magazine and has had work appear in Ligonier Valley Writers and Wisconsin People & Ideas.