EDITORIAL BOARD

Burlee Vang (Founder) is the author of the chapbook Incantation for Rebirth (Swan Scythe Press, 2010). His prose and poetry have appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, Runes: A Review of Poetry, among other publications. His work has also been anthologized in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: Best New Voices of 2006 (Random House) and Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley (Heyday). In 2006, he was the recipient of the Paj Ntaub Voice Prize in Poetry. He holds an MFA in fiction from California State University – Fresno, and is the founder of HAWC. In 2011, he, along with his brother Abel, were awarded a Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Mary, and their two children, Belle and Jude.

Anthony Cody was born in Fresno, California with roots in both the Dust Bowl and Bracero Program. A graduate of CSU-Fresno and a 2012 CantoMundo Fellow, Anthony has been writing poetry since first unraveling a poem in Spanish. His work has been performed in community theatre productions in California and NYC, and published in Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971–2007 (City Lights) and How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday), in which he was also co-editor, as well as a featured poet via the online site ToeGood Poetry. New work is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. After serving as Managing Director of Arts and Culture at El Taller Latino Americano in NYC, Anthony returned to Fresno to work as Communications Manager for Fresno State's Theatre Arts program. To read more about Anthony Cody, please visit his website: www.anthonycody.com.

Yashi Lee was born and raised in Fresno, California.  She is currently a graduate student at California State University – Fresno pursuing a MA in English and plans to continue on to a PhD. She hopes to one day be a distinguished fantasy fiction writer as well as a Hmong American writer.

Pos L. Moua is a Hmong-American writer. He has written several short poems about his childhood experience during the Vietnam War and about living in and around the Central Valley region and its bioregional connection between himself, the Hmong and the many people who share the Valley land with him. His chapbook Towards the World Where The Torches are Burning (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) gives “an account of love and family and identity in the poet’s new land.” Additionally, he has also had literary works presented in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, UC Davis Poetry Review, Sacramento’s Poetry Now, and National Poetry.

Ying Thao has a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside and a Certificate in Asian American Studies from California State University, Long Beach. He first connected Creative Non-Fiction through his participation in the HAWC workshop. As a gay Hmong American, Ying believes that his voice is rooted in the issues of both a gay male and a Hmong male, as these identities are seemingly diametrically opposed to one another culturally and socially. He hopes that through Creative Non-Fiction he can explore and find balance within the duality.

Mai Der Vang is the 2016 Walt Whitman Award winner of the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Journal, The Cincinnati Review, The Missouri Review Online, Radar, Asian American Literary Review, The Collagist, and elsewhere. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. As an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle, she is co-editor of How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology. Mai Der has received residencies from Hedgebrook and is a Kundiman fellow. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. Her forthcoming full-length collection Afterland will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. To read more about Mai Der, please visit her website: www.maidervang.com.

Soul Vang is the author of To Live Here, winner of the 2014 Imaginary Friend Press Poetry Prize, and co-editor of How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). Soul is a poet, teacher, and U.S. Army veteran. He holds an MFA in Poetry from California State University, Fresno and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC). His writing is published or forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others. Soul holds the distinction of being the first Hmong American to publish a full length collection of poems. To read more about Soul Vang, please visit his website: www.soulvang.net.

Andre Yang lives in Fresno, California. He is a founding member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC), where he actively conducts and participates in public writing workshops.   He received his MFA degree from Fresno State where he was a Provost Scholar and a Philip Levine Scholar.  There, he divides his time between teaching freshman composition and poetry. Andre is a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellow and has attended to the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the UCross Foundation residency. His poetry has appeared in Paj Ntaub Voice, Hyphen Magazine, Kweli: Journal, the chapbook anthology Here is a Pen (Achiote Press), and the anthology Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press).