News & Events

Afsheen Farhadi was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of the novel, FALSE PROPHET (2026, Melville House), and the forthcoming essay collection, THE CREEPS: MEDITATIONS ON HORROR (Fall 2027, University of Iowa Press).

His short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Catapult, Bright Lights Film Journal, and elsewhere. He has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where he was a Provost Graduate Fellow, and served as the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing, Prose at Southern Methodist University. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Lisa Low is the author of Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023). She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.

Kathleen Spada writes at the intersection of memory, place, and the stories families inherit. Her work explores how forgotten lives, hidden histories, and the landscapes we inhabit continue to shape who we become.

She is the author of WARD: A Memoir of Ghosts, Grandmothers, and Little Girls Who Disappear, a literary memoir born from the discovery that her mother had been sold as a child and raised under a false identity. What began as a search for historical truth became a journey through archives, forgotten places, family silence, and the enduring presence of women whose stories refused to disappear.

Kathleen holds a PhD in Literary Nonfiction and Composition/Rhetoric from the University of Cincinnati. Her research has been supported by fellowships and awards, including the PEO Scholar's Award. She teaches writing and directs the Writing Center at Northern Kentucky University, where she helps writers discover the stories only they can tell.

She lives in Kentucky and is currently at work on her second book, ESTHER, which continues the investigation begun in WARD by asking not simply what happened—but why.