Editors

Deniqua Campbell

Deniqua Campbell is a poet, former Hip-Hop journalist, and a recent graduate of the Writer’s Foundry. Born and raised in the Bronx, she spent her undergraduate years in Washington, DC obtaining a BA in journalism from Howard University. She is currently the copy-editor at iOne Digital where she edits and writes across seven urban media brands. Her poetry appears in Coneflower Café and INK Babies Literary Magazine.

Paul Corning

Originally from southern Indiana, Paul has lived in New York City since 2006. His work has received support from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Workshop, the St. Joseph’s MFA and a PEN/Dau prize nomination. His theatre work includes Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More and Romeo and Juliet at Lincoln Center Education.

Mark Iosifescu

Mark Iosifescu is a writer and musician from New York City. His story “Journey to the Ills” appeared in Echoes of a Natural World: Tales of the Strange and Estranged (First to Knock, 2020). He is the co-founder of Pleasure Editions, a small press publisher of avant-garde literature, poetry, translation, and fine art, and he has been editor of Anthology Editions’s line of music and culture books since 2017. His website is www.iosifescu.biz.

Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson is a second-year Fiction MFA candidate at St. Joseph’s University. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and cat daughter. A lover of fiction across many genres, his favorite tends to fall along the lines of absurdity and satire and anything that grabs the heart.

Melody Rose Serra

Melody’s passion is teaching and empowering others by sharing what she has learned. She helped launch an arts and crafts program at a children’s hospital and also taught at San Quentin State Prison. Melody hopes to inspire youth to explore and expand their creativity through web development, writing, and art. 

Ashley-Devon Williamston

Ashley-Devon Williamston (they/them) is a first year MFA student at The Writer’s Foundry. Fascinated with the human experience, they often combine their skills as a poet, anthropologist, and collagist to tell stories about these rare creatures. Some things they love are the South, fossil hunting, and slow presents, like mailed postcards or homemade pie delivered by the hands that made it. As an editorial fellow for the Writer’s Foundry Review, they review works of poetry and nonfiction.

Faculty Advisors

Alicia Mountain

ALICIA MOUNTAIN’s debut collection, High Ground Coward (Iowa, 2018), was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy to win the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Four in Hand (BOA Editions, forthcoming early 2023). Her chapbook, Thin Fire (BOAAT Press), was selected by Natalie Diaz. Dr. Mountain was a Clemens Doctoral Fellow at the University of Denver and the 2020-21 Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. Mountain is a contributing editor at the Kenyon Review. She is a lesbian poet, based in New York City where she teaches at Columbia University and in the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s College. Keep up with her on twitter at @HiGroundCoward.

Lee Clay Johnson

Lee Clay Johnson is the author of the novel Nitro Mountain (Knopf), which won the 2017 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Literary Hub, the Oxford American, The Common, Appalachian Heritage, Salamander, and the Mississippi Review.  

He holds a BA from Bennington College, an MFA from the University of Virginia, and was awarded a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He grew up around Nashville in a family of bluegrass musicians and currently lives in Brooklyn, where he serves as Director of the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s College. 

Lee Clay Johnson

Previous Editors

Tom Storch

Walker Minot

Nina Semczuk

Danielle James

    Steven Hobbs (1980-2022)

    Steven Hobbs was a director at the MFA program in Creative Writing at The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College. He served on the committee for the Prison Writing Program at PEN American Center.

    He was a beloved Foundry professor, mentor, and friend. Steven was a champion of this journal from its genesis, a source of inspiration and strength to all who knew him.