Staff

Our Staff

Editor-in-Chief: Casey McCarthy

Editorial Assistants: Ash Kaur, Sydney Denham

Communications and Administrative Manager: Melody Rivas

Communications and Administrative Assistant: Analisa Davis, Natalie Intihar

Recruitment Manager: Rita Aucker

Design and Layout Manager: Ryan Yau

Design and Layout Assistants: McKenna Johnson, Harper Wood, Star

Website Design Manager: Caitlin McKenna

Website Assistants: Logan Farley

Art Manager: Maren Detlefs

Art Judges: Clara Gerken, Jen Sexton-Riley

Copy Chief: Clarissa McLaughlin

Copy Editors: Brianne Simone, Ember-Reece Richardson, James Tickle, Samantha Carvalho, Sarah Hart, Emily Andsager, Jazmine Nieves, Kelly Rota, Kennedy McIntosh, Leah Waites, Leticia Lekos, Meahgan Ferral, Meghan Joyce, Melanie Bellavance, Olivia Johnson, Reese Collins, Serena Sanchez, Shay Manning

Social Media Manager: K Rose Stanley

Social Media Assistant: Zaira Aranda, Ian Rossin, Lauren Shoemaker

Submissions Manager: Amira Mazzawy

Submissions Assistant: Vacant

Features Manager: Natia Kirvalidze

Features Assistant: Katherine Murray, Ella Morgan

Features Writers: Kenyon Geiger, Theodore Boronkay, Zenia deHaven, Evelyn Giffin, Inanna Carter, Jessilyn Quinn, Lizzy DiGrande

Readers: Evelyn Giffin, Inanna Carter, Jessilyn Quinn, Lizzy DiGrande, Alexandra Paradzick, Amber Morrison, Elizabeth Tonsberg, Hayley Piscotti, Joceyln Peikes, Katie McGuire, Mary Massey, Thijs van der Put, Emily Chapel, Rita Aucker, Lia Callihan, Ian Rossin, Lauren Shoemaker, K Rose Stanley, Addison Wallace, Jordan Penney, Logan Farley, Ash Kaur, Harper Wood, Star, Jazmine Nieves, Kelly Rota, Kennedy McIntosh, Leah Waites, Leticia Lekos, Meahgan Ferral, Meghan Joyce, Melanie Bellavance, Olivia Johnson, Reese Collins, Serena Sanchez, Shay Manning, Clara Gerken, Jennifer Sexton-Riley, Maren Detlefs

Meet the Team

Emily Andsager – Submissions Assistant

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”
-Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Alexandra Ashe – Social Media Assistant

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” -Ernest Hemingway

Haley Brock – Reader

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Emily Chapel – Reader & Co-Chair of the Board

“Sometimes a fantasy author has to point out the strangeness of reality.” -Sir Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Analisa Davis – Communications & Administrative Assistant

“The lover alone possesses his gift of love.” -Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Zenia deHaven – Features Writer
They/Them

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. you don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.” – Becky Chambers, “A Psalm for the Wild-Built”

Maren Detlefs – Art Manager & Reader

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.” -Neil Gaiman, Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World

Patrick Edinger – Features Writer & Board Administrator

If you live too much in the past, your life will be nothing but history.

Shannon Stockdale-Elftman – Feature Writer

“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” -Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Natalie Intihar – Communications & Administrative Assistant

 “Writing fiction is easy- just start writing about yourself and don’t stop yourself from lying.” 

Natia Kirvalidze – Features Editor

“The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers, but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.” -L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Keera Lydon – Reader

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Amira Mazzawy – Submissions Manager

I plan to become a professor of English and creative writing, and will soon endeavor the daunting task of applying for a Ph.D. For now, I hope being a submissions manager will expose me to more creative works and what the world of publishing is like to help teach my future students.

Casey McCarthy – Editor-in-Chief

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” -Robert Frost

Katie McGuire – Reader

“So it goes.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Clarissa McLaughlin – Board Chair & Copy Chief

She/Her

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
—Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Ella Miller – Reader

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” -Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Ella Rose Morgan – Features Assistant
She/Her

Ella is in her second year of the Publishing MA program. Outside of publishing, she loves reading, cooking, baking, yoga, and crosswords .

Amber Morrison – Reader

“Don’t think or judge. Just listen.” -Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

Alex Paradzick – Reader
She/Her

“And then, at last, the world breathed in.” – A Conjuring of Light by V. E. Schwab

Ember-Reece Richardson – Copy Editor

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” -Benjamin Franklin

Jen Sexton-Riley – Art Judge & Board Member

“Year after year
On the monkey’s face
A monkey face”
-Matsuo Bashō

Lauren Shoemaker – Reader and Social Media Assistant
She/Hers

Lauren is a first year masters student at Emerson College in the Publishing and Writing program. Aside from reading, she loves to go on walks and cook!

Ember-Reece Richardson – Copywriter
He/They
Write something worth reading, or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

Melody Rivas – Communications and Administrative Manager

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

K. R. Stanley – Social Media Manager & Reader

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” -Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Tales and Poems

Shannon Stockdale-Elftman – Feature Writer

Shannon is a wanderer in the Midwestern wild, a teacher, and dreamer. She is approaching her final thesis semester in Emerson’s Popular Fiction and Publishing MFA program in the fall of 2024. Her thesis project is entitled The Fated Forest and is Northern Exposure meets Welcome to the Night Vaile with a dash of Narnia thrown in for flavor. Shannon lives in Indiana with her husband, four children, and a TBR pile that constantly threatens to fall on her.

Shannon Sweeney – Features Co-Assistant & Feature Writer

Tehya Tenasco – Reader

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” -Charles Baudelaire

James Tickle – Reader and Copy Editor
He/Him

“Not all those who wander are lost” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.

Ryan Yau – Design and Layout Manager

Ryan Yau (he/him) is a third-year journalism student. He is interested in writing criticism, primarily film but also the other arts. Various interests include playing saxophone (formerly), rock climbing, and being a waiter.