Stacy R. Nigliazzo is the author of Sky the Oar, a new collection of poems from Press 53 (Fall 2018). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including the American Journal of Nursing, Bellevue Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ilanot Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Thrush Poetry Journal. Her first collection of poems, Scissored Moon, won First Place in the 2014 American Journal of  Nursing Book of the Year Awards in Public Interest and Creative Works. She lives in Houston, Texas, and has worked as an emergency room nurse for the past twelve years.

Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair as a professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has published six collections of poetry with Press 53, including This Miraculous Turning, winner of the 2015 Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry. His poetry has been featured in The Writer’s Almanac and in Ted Kooser's “American Life in Poetry” column, and he holds degrees in literature from the University of Chicago, the University of New Mexico, and the University of California, Davis. His flash fiction collection Bleachers: Fifty-Four Linked Fictions debuted from Press 53 in April.

Christopher Forrest

Guest Poetry Editor

Christopher Forrest serves as poetry editor and is managing editor of the Immersion Poetry Series at Press 53. He graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a degree in economics and worked in the financial sector for nearly a decade before returning to his hometown of Winston-Salem and shifting his career path toward his passion: the arts. He received his MFA from Queens University of Charlotte in 2017 and his poetry has appeared in a wide range of publications. When not at Press 53, you’ll find him with his lovely, supportive wife and two young boys, playing blocks and trains, or hovering over a puzzle, a pen never very far away.

Read a poem from each of Chris’s first three selections for the Immersion Poetry Series

Julie Zuckerman

Guest Short Fiction Editor

Julie Zuckerman’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including The SFWP Quarterly, The Macguffin, Salt Hill, Sixfold, The Coil, Ellipsis, Crab Orchard Review and others. A native of Connecticut, she now lives in Modiin, Israel, with her husband and four children. Her novel in stories, The Book of Jeremiah, was the runner-up for the 2018 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and is her debut story collection.

Read “The Dutiful Daughter” from The Book of Jeremiah by Julie Zuckerman