Editors
Editor/Publisher
Vern Miller has authored many stories and articles. He holds advanced degrees in German Language and Literature, as well as an MBA degree. He has taught at two major universities. Now he is combining his enthusiasm for literature with his interest in business to publish the Fifth Wednesday Journal. His work has appeared recently in Snowy Egret and A Prairie Journal.
Managing Editor
Rachel Hamsmith recently earned her MBA in management from North Central College in Naperville, IL. While an undergraduate, she served as editor of the North Central Review, the undergraduate literary publication at North Central College. She represented the magazine at the AWP Conference in Chicago on a panel discussing publicity efforts for undergraduate literary journals.
Advisory Editor
James Ballowe is a poet and an essayist. He is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Bradley University. While at the University of Illinois-Urbana, he learned the craft of editing on the staff of ACCENT: A QUARTERLY OF NEW LITERATURE. He currently teaches courses in nature writing at The Morton Arboretum.
Nina Corwin is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps (Spring, 2011) and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints, and co-edited Inhabiting the Body, an anthology of women’s poetry. Nominated for the 2008 Pushcart Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review/nor, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review and Verse. Corwin has performed her work across the country, regularly collaborating with musicians, dancers and other poets. Corwin lives in Chicago, where she is a psychotherapist known for her work on behalf of victims of violence. You can read and listen to her work at From the Fishouse: www.fishousepoems.org/archives/nina_corwin
Daniel S. Libman finished his B.A. degree at Columbia College in Chicago and earned his M.A. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His short story, “In the Belly of the Cat”, has been translated into several languages and has appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology (2001) and in The Paris Review Book of ... (Best of the Paris Review anthology 2003). His short fiction and essays have appeared in Details, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Columbia, Santa Monica Review, Columbia, Beloit Fiction Journal, Northwest Review, Oxford Magazine, Confrontations among many others.
Art Editor
Jenn Hollmeyer is a founding editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal and holds an MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Post Road, Salamander, Meridian, Etchings, and other publications. Jenn lives in the Chicago area, where she works as an advertising copywriter and paints architectural portraits.
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Monica Berlin's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, The Southeast Review, Third Coast, Dislocate, Artful Dodge, The Missouri Review, After Hours, Diagram, Fourteen Hills, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Memoir (and), and Passages North, where she was awarded the 2009 Thomas R. Hruska Memorial Prize in nonfiction. Her critically work has been published with MLA's Professions, in Black Warrior Review, and with Dalkey Archive Press. Currently, an Associate Professor at Knox College in Galesburg, IL, Berlin teaches creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, focuses on late 20th and 21st century American literature, and serves as the Associate Director for the Program in Creative Writing.
Layout and Design Editor
Kat Sanchez is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She published a chapbook, “Hangover Junction” in 2007 with Petroglyph Books. She has had work featured in Left Behind: A Journal of Shock Literature (2007) and Mosaic Art and Literary Journal (2008, 2009). Originally from southern California, she attended the University of California, Riverside where she received her BA in Creative Writing and was Poetry Editor (2007-08) and Editor-in-Chief (2008-09) of the undergraduate-run literary journal Mosaic. For three years she worked as assistant to the publications editor at UCR, and has experience in copy editing, writing, photography, and having fun.
Book Review Editor
Andrea Witzke Slot’s work has appeared in Borderlands:
Texas Poetry Review, Translation Review, Pacific
Review, Southern Women’s Review, and Chiron Review,
among other print and online journals. She teaches at the University
of Illinois at Chicago and is also on the editorial board of Rhino
Poetry. To keep life interesting, she publishes her creative work
under the name Andrea Witzke Slot but continues to teach and publish
academic work under the name Andrea Witzke Leavey. Her first book To
find a new beauty (Gold Wake Press, 2012) borrows its title from
a line of H.D.’s and has been described by Marge Piercy as being “rich
with cool, intelligent and carefully crafted poems that often have
a subtext of terror and darkness.”
Please send books for review to her at P O Box 594 / Wilmette, IL 60091.
Her website is: andreawitzkeslot.com.
Copy Editor
Sherry Stratton made her first foray into freelance editing in college, reading and marking up her friend’s independent study papers. Now retired from a career in technical writing and editing, she has turned her focus to the subjects closest to her heart. Her work has been published in the online Spring/Summer 2008 and 2009 issues of A Prairie Journal as well as in Snowy Egret and Seeding the Snow. Sherry and her husband live at the edge of a forest preserve in northeastern Illinois.
Media Assistant
Annie Bruckner is a 2011 graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, where she earned a BA in both English and government. She spent most of her first year out of college teaching at a university in Qufu, China, and CouchSurfing throughout China and Southeast Asia. Now she is back home in Illinois trying to decide on her next adventure. In the meantime, she is reading, writing, and learning how to box.