About Our Guest Editors for Collaborations
Poetry: Octavio Quintanilla
Octavio Quintanilla is the 2025 Texas Poet Laureate and the author of the poetry collections If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014), The Book of Wounded Sparrows (Texas Review Press, 2024), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets (University of Arizona Press, 2025). He is the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry and Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely and can be found in public spaces such as at the San Antonio Labor Plaza and at Poet’s Pointe. Octavio is also the recipient of the Nebrija Creadores Scholarship which allowed him a month-long residency at the Instituto Franklin at Alcalá University in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and teaches at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. He was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. Website: https://www.octavioquintanilla.com/
Poetry: Todd Fredson
Todd Fredson is a poet, a critic, and a translator of West African literature. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Crucifix-Blocks (Tebot Bach, 2012), which won the Patricia Bibby First Book Award, and Century Worm (New Issues Press, 2018). His most recent translation, of Bété poet Azo Vauguy’s work, appears as the double-translation Zakwato & Loglêdou’s Peril (Action Books, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle’s Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Fredson’s work has been supported by Fulbright and NEA fellowships, a Virginia G. Piper Fellowship for Cultural Exchange, and other kindnesses.
Fiction: Jeff Friedman
Jeff Friedman has published eleven collections of poetry and prose, including his most recent, Broken Signals (Bamboo Dart Press, August 2024). His work has appeared in Best Microfiction , New Republic, Flash Fiction Funny, Poetry, and American Poetry Review. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards.
Creative Nonfiction: Sherre Vernon
Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings, The Name is Perilous, and Flame Nebula, Bright Nova. Sherre has been published in journals such as Tahoma Literary Review and The Chestnut Review, nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in several collections including Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions.