Please join us at Black Spring Books on November 19th @ 7 pm to celebrate the launch of our newest issue, The Illusions Issue, guest-edited by Jose Diego Medina.

Featuring readings by a selection of issue contributors:

A.J. Bermudez is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her work can be found in Creative Nonfiction, Boulevard, Story, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Elias Diakolios holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University where he taught undergraduate creative writing and served as Poetry Editor for Columbia Journal 59. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Bookends Review, Juked, Gavialidae, Circle Show, and Rainy Day Magazine. He also makes linocuts and studies entomology.

Edward Helfers writes short fiction, music, and essays. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Sonora Review, DIAGRAM, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, The Rupture, Puerto Del Sol, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. His stories have been featured in the Best of The Net out of Sundress Press and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Born in Missouri, he currently teaches critical and creative writing for the Literature Department at American University in Washington, D.C.

Holly Messitt is Brooklyn-based and an associate professor at BMCC/CUNY. In addition to writing poetry, she is editing a selected works for poet Hilda Morley.

Iva Moore is a poet from Waverly, Kentucky. Her writing has been featured in Juked, Hobart, The Quarterless Review, and elsewhere. Her forthcoming chapbook Women Collapse Into / Better, Brighter Artists was selected by Sawako Nakayasu as the winner of the Oversound Chapbook Prize.

Alana Saab is an experimental literary writer and award-winning screenwriter. Her debut novel, Please Stop Trying to Leave Me, is represented by Mina Hamedi at Janklow & Nesbit. Alana’s work appears in various journals and magazines, such as Pank Magazine and the Minetta Review. She has an MFA in Fiction Writing from The New School, an MA in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University, and a BA in the Phenomenology of Storytelling from NYU. She is also a long-standing teaching artist at the non-profit, “Here, There and Everywhere,” facilitating writing workshops to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human-trafficking, as well as a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor. Most days, Alana can be found in Madison Square Park with her partner or writing at her desk supervised by her four cats.