We are thrilled to introduce Brendan Stephens as our new online Creative Nonfiction editor for Aquifer!
Brendan Stephens is a writer and educator from Appalachia. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pinch, Epoch, the Southeast Review, Cleaver Magazine, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His awards include multiple Inprint Donald Barthelme awards, an Into the Void Fiction Prize, a Sequestrum Emerging Writer Award, and inclusion in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions. He earned his Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston and an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Currently, he is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern Oklahoma State University and a submissions editor for SmokeLong Quarterly.
Mark Polanzak is the author of the hybrid work POP! (Stillhouse) and the story collection, The OK End of Funny Town (BOA Editions), which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, The American Scholar, DIAGRAM, and anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. Mark co-founded the literary magazine, draft: the journal of process, and co-produced the podcast, The Fail Safe. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA Program in Fiction, Mark teaches creative writing, literature, and podcasting at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He lives in Rhode Island.
