CONNOR COYNE
Director, Editor
Connor Coyne (he/him) is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan.
Connor has published several novels and a short story collection, including the magical serial novel Urbantasm, and his novella Hollywood. His work has been featured in Vox.com, Belt Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the director of the Flint-based Gothic Funk Press and is facilitator for the Gloria Coles Flint Public Library‘s writing workshops.
Connor is a graduate of the University of Chicago and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School. Today, he lives with his wife and two daughters in Flint’s College Cultural Neighborhood (aka the East Village), less than a mile from the house where he grew up.
AMY CZARKOWSKI
Editor
Amy Czarkowski (she/her, they/them) is a proud Chicagoan who graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture and a minor in media study. While pursuing her degree she used her elective courses to focus on the artistic nature of architecture and how it is used in conjunction with design, film, and photography. In 2014 she entered a short film to the Cinecity 2014 International Architectural Film Competition. Her film was accepted into the finals and received a nomination for first place.
She found home in the brewery industry in Chicago working as the general manager, events manager, and graphic designer for Empirical Brewery. There she learned the importance of continued learning of new skills post higher education and how to integrate her passions into her workplace. She received her first level Cicerone certification and is studying for the second level as well.
Amy is in the process of creating her own small printmaking business under the name Warm Regards as a way to continuously celebrate and share her art. Her favorite beers are lagers, doppelbocks, and stouts, she loves a whiskey neat, her favorite song is Roll With The Changes by REO Speedwagon, and she tends to never wear matching socks.
SKYLAR MORAN
Editor
Skylar Moran is an architect (pursuing licensure) in Chicago, an adjunct professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, and a founding member and former steward of the Chicago chapter of The Architecture Lobby, a multi-tendency organization of architectural workers.
Areas of research include culture and infrastructure, in terms of the suitability of conditions for growth; mobility and destabilization of communities; mystery, suspense, and dramatic irony in architecture; pathological, postmodern encroachment by private uses of public space.
His work “Mirage” most recently appeared in The Unsolicited Sideshow, a corollary exhibit to the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial exploring the contemporary condition of otherness.
Skylar’s awards include the George Danforth Traveling Fellowship, the Spies Droste Study Abroad Scholarship, & the Illinois Institute of Technology Presidential Scholarship.
See what he is doing now at skylarmoran.net.
SAM PERKINS-HARBIN
Designer
Sam is a nomadic artist. He can often be found making camp at in the forest or at some sunny coffee shop, working on a book cover or poster. If he had spare time, he would spend it travelling, working on boats, or making art, however he has no spare time because he spends it all travelling, working on boats, and making art.
His garlic bread and butter website is Forge22 Design. He periodically wipes the dust off of some websites he’s made, such as PVC Ballistics, Steampunk Chicago, and the Undead Report.
He is often found in a van down by the river, with his cat Lt Cmdr Ripley.
ROY RICHARD
Volunteer
‘Coot,’ – aka Roy Richard – is a sarcastic curmudgeon, cursed to live his life with a big loving heart. A product of Genesee County, Michigan and all its varied and quirky communities, he had always dreamed of being a writer. Now after sixty plus years, poetry has taken up residency in his head. He is cursed to spend his remaining days doing the ‘right thing’ and seeking his true identity. He is a graduate of Mott Community College and has many hours of credits wasting away at both Baker University and U of M Flint. He has self-published one chapbook, Always the Right Thing and a Vampire novella, The Vixen.
REINHARDT SUAREZ
Editor
When not slowly going insane, Reinhardt Suarez writes and edits in the tundral hinterlands of Minnesota. He teaches writing at the Loft Literary Center in downtown Minneapolis, as well–this he does simultaneously with going insane (to save time).
Most recently, his short story, “Jimi Henrix Used to Play at the 8th Wonder,” was published in the Winter 2012 issue of NY ______. Magazine. He also co-authored a story with Angela Veronica Wong, illustrated by Christine Norrie, for Secret Identities Vol. 2: Shattered, an Asian-American graphic novel anthology coming out in fall 2012. The bulk of his published work, however, is forever enmeshed in the text authored by other, more illustrious names. He’d like you to know that he’s reasonably okay with this. Reasonably.
He would also like you to know that if you ask him if he’s a god, he will say “yes.” In fact, he will say “yes” to most things, such as swarthy pirates, certain moldy cheeses, and Abraham Lincoln. Wait, he’s recently changed his mind about Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe gets a “no.” Also getting a “no” are jock straps, lobster bibs featuring lobsters who do not have bibs on themselves as well, and kumquats. Kumquats? Yes, kumquats. He means “no, kumquats.”