Write of Passage

Jordan Alexander (she/they) is an Afrofuturist writer, Senior Associate Editor of The Florida Review, a Masters of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Central Florida, and their ancestors’ wildest dreams. She emanates from the Florida Panhandle but currently resides in Orlando, Florida with her cat Uhura. You can read her fiction in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. You can find her on Instagram @jordan.alexander.writes.

Taylor Arnold was born and raised in Florida, where she continues to find mystery and magic in sticky summer nights. Her work has been nominated for the AWP 2026 Intro Journals Project and featured in Thread Magazine. She is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Central Florida.

Lo Bedevia is a writer from Miami, FL. She is a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Central Florida. She primarily writes fiction and loves to explore themes such as identity, karmic relationships, and desire in her writing. She is currently working on a collection of short stories titled It’s All the Same for her thesis.

Harry Burke is a writer who is aspiring to make sense of the world through a mess of fiction and nonfiction. Raised in California, educated in New York, and growing older in Florida, this quiet creature is still pulling apart memories of city streets and strange smells to stuff into his short stories and essays. Currently, Harry is a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Central Florida, where he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.

Bianca Dagostino is a fiction author, a poet, an aspiring editor, and a lover of imaginative prose. Bisexual, atheist, mentally ill, and oft mistaken for a vampire, Bianca creates work that reflects her strange and chaotic outlook on life. She is a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction at the University of Central Florida, the Managing Editor of Harbor Editions, the Editorial Intern at Riot in Your Throat Press, and a reader for The Florida Review. Her work has appeared in Blackwater Review and Mania Magazine. She lives in Orlando, Florida with her partner and their ball of darkness, Tibby.

Adialyz Del Valle Berríos is a Queer Puerto Rican writer based in Florida currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida. She’s a speculative writer centering her work around themes of colonialism, climate change, and what it means to be human. She reads for Hugo Finalist Khoreo Magazine and her work has been published in Hexagon Magazine. You can find her lurking in aquariums marveling at the wonders of the natural world.

Part-time poet, full-time nonfiction writer, Landy Flickinger can’t wait to get to do a bit of everything their whole life long. They have a particular penchant for assembling IKEA furniture, kissing their wife, playing Minecraft with so many wonderful friends, and pondering the beginning and end of everything. They’ve had multiple poems and short stories published, have been a guest speaker at Columbia University, and act as an advocate for their rare neuroimmune disease community through their work.

Alessandra Gonzalez is a Cuban American poet who dedicates her craft to pinning down the parallels between palm trees. Her work explores the tangled roots of family, memory, and identity, weaving personal experience with the layered history of Cuba. Her writing has appeared in Acentos Review, Wild Sound, Meniscus, Saw Palm, Bookends Review, The Diamond Gazette, and Portland Review. When she’s not writing, you can find her chasing the perfect cafecito, getting lost in old photo albums, or wondering what the ocean remembers.

Hannah Howe is a poet from Melbourne, Florida, whose work seeks to explore the morbid and mundane, interpersonal relationships, and metaphysics. She is interested in employing experimental techniques in her process and exploring hybrid work. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Central Florida. In her free time, she enjoys indulging in her hyper fixations, taking naps with her dog, and exploring the nearest swamp.

Fred Lambert is a multi-genre writer and two-tour Marine veteran of the Iraq War. His work has been featured in Ghost Parachute; The Drunken Odyssey; War, Literature & the Arts; and After Action Review: A Collection of Writing and Artwork by Veterans of the Global War on Terror. An avid reader, runner, and watcher of violent movies, he is re-writing two war memoirs in his free time and is currently at work on several pieces of short fiction as part of the MFA program at the University of Central Florida. He supervises the writing center at Valencia College’s Lake Nona campus in his hometown of Orlando, Florida.

Lil McKenna is not a SoundCloud rapper–that’s just her name. Her poetry takes inspiration from a midwestern gothic childhood in rural Ohio and the cynicism/lyricism of your favorite 2000s emo bands. After graduating with a BA in Theatre Studies, she is now a second-year student of the University of Central Florida Creative Writing MFA. She reads for The Florida Review literary magazine and wishes to get her PhD someday. In her free time, Lil runs a DIY event company called Velvet Crowbar Booking and sings/screams for a progressive metal band called Real Men. Her dream is to one day open a venue for creatives of all types in Orlando.

Susan Mesler-Evans (she/they) writes in as many genres as they can, exploring both the literary and the speculative via short fiction. They have been previously published in Mansion of Fears and The Aspec Journal. She is currently on the fiction track in the MFA, with plans to defend her thesis, WORMFOOD, this April. In addition to writing and reading, Susan’s passions include Dungeons and Dragons, being bad at video games, and being a cat mom.

Leona Strong is a multi-genre writer currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Central Florida. She is an assistant editor, and former intern at The Florida Review. Most recently she has had two pieces published in Aquifer and another in Thread Magazine. Leona is the mother of five boys, now men, and their partners. She splits her time between soggy, sunny Florida, the barren desert of southern Utah, and most points in between—gathering stories as she goes.