About Us

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 Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, W.W. Norton. She is also author of The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award.  Two new books are forthcoming in 2024: Finger Exercises for Poets, and a volume of poems, Life on Earth, both from W.W. Norton. Laux is founding faculty at Pacific University and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. 

 Leah Poole Osowski is the author of hover over her (Kent State University Press 2016), winner of the Wick Poetry Prize, and Exceeds Us, forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in 2023. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She was a former emerging writer in residence at Penn State Altoona and is the poetry editor of Raleigh Review. 

 Jessica Pitchford’s fiction has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Extract(s), Gris-Gris, storySouth, and elsewhere. Her novel, Can’t Walk Out, was recently longlisted for the Regal House Publishing Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and shortlisted for the 2022 Howling Bird Press Fiction Prize. The former Editor-in-Chief of Pembroke Magazine, she now teaches writing and literature to high schoolers at the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics as well as serves as Raleigh Review Fiction Editor. 

  Elaina Ellis (Senior Copyeditor at Raleigh Review) is a literary editor, writer, and curator. She spent a decade at Copper Canyon Press, where she served as Editor. Elaina is the author of the poetry collection Write About an Empty Birdcage, and has earned fellowships and awards from Jack Straw, Vermont Studio Center, Lambda Literary, Mineral School, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. She works as a freelance book editor and lives in Bellingham, Washington. 

 Erin Osborne (Assistant Fiction Editor) is a writer and Library Media Assistant living in Beaverton, Oregon. Her fiction explores themes of stasis and imagination and has appeared in NOON Annual, Elohi Gadugi, M Review, and Habit. She holds a B.A. in English Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Marylhurst University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. In 2009, she received the first Jackie Mosier Emerging Writer Award, and in 2017 received her first Pushcart Special Mention. She lives with her daughter.

 Shel Senai is queer, non-binary writer, creative and parent of two residing in Massachusetts. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and their stories have appeared in The Keep Things, LEON Literary Review, Citron Review and Reservoir. Shel has received awards and residencies from Aspen Words, Tin House’s Winter Workshop, the St. Botolph Club Foundation and, most recently, an artist fellowship from the Mass Cultural Council. Shel has been on the editorial staff at Raleigh Review since 2016 and presently serves as an Assistant Fiction Editor. 

 Dailihana Alfonseca (Fiction Team Member) is currently working on her Masters in Latino/a Studies with a focus on the cultural legacy of the African Diaspora and the marginalization of Caribbean Immigrants. She resides in South Carolina with her family and is a member of South Carolina Writers Association. Her poetry has previously appeared in The Bangalore Review, and her fiction recently appeared in Driftwood.

 Madison Cyr (Fiction Team Member) is an MFA candidate in fiction at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She's been published previously in The Printer's Devil Review, Cape Rock, and Leon Literary Review (forthcoming). When not writing, Madison can be found either running, eating, or watching The Office on repeat ad Infinitum. She lives in Southern Indiana with her husband, Bobby. Together they share a rag-tag group of fur-babies that includes two dogs, and one very bossy cat. She is at work on her first novel.

 Chas Carey (Fiction Team Member) works primarily in disaster management. A member of the "narrative technologist" collective Wolf 359, his writing has been or will soon be featured in outlets such as NPR's Live From Here, the American Public Media children's podcast Smash Boom Best, and the Hearth Gods reading series in New York City. He holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College and lives in Massachusetts with his wife and their two children.  

 Chelsea Harlan (Poetry Team Member) is the author of Bright Shade, selected by Jericho Brown as the winner of the 2022 American Poetry Review / Honickman First Book Prize. She holds a BA from Bennington College, as well as an MFA from CUNY Brooklyn College, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She lives in Appalachian Virginia, where she was born and raised, and where she works at a small public library. 

 Annie Woodford (Poetry Team Member) is the author of Bootleg (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2019), which was a runner-up for the Weatherford Award for Appalachian poetry. Her second book is the winner of Mercer University’s 2020 Adrienne Bond Prize and will be published in 2022. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, and Prairie Schooner. She has been awarded scholarships to the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences as well as Barbara Deming Fund and Jean Ritchie fellowships. Originally from Bassett, Virginia—a mill town near the North Carolina border—she now teaches community college English in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. 

 Susan Finch (Fiction Team Member) is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Crab Orchard Review, New Ohio Review, Nimrod,

Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere. Her fiction has received several awards, and most recently, she was selected as the winner of New Ohio Review’s Editors Prize in fiction. Currently, she is working on a novel and a story collection. 

Photo credit: Allen Clark

 Al Olson (she/they) (Layout Designer) has an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. They enjoy making zines including, Women in Horror (essays using film theory to examine how women function in horror movies), Pickle Spirit Guide (interactive with magic dill, tarot card, and stickers) and Bummer Time (two-color risograph printed illustrations depicting summer depression.) You can find their poetry in The Racket.