Masthead

Jessica Denzer is a writer and educator. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Fordham University and her M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a researcher in residence at the New York Public Library and writes fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Number Magazine, the Unpublishable Anthology, and West Trade Review, among others. Her short story “The Silence” was selected for Alternating Current Press Best Small Fictions of 2023. That same year she was involved with the launch of Iron Oak Editions, a new independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, where she serves as Prose Editor and provides full novel critiques. Having previously served as an Associate Fiction Editor for West Trade Review, she is currently a contributing editor and writer for Four Way Review and teaches writing and literature at Fordham University.

Jessica is particularly drawn to winding, language-driven narrative that is both risky and well constructed. In other words, she likes the risk that takes the long road. Her own writing mixes the personal and historical with fiction to develop long winding narratives that stumble around the raw parts of human nature. She writes fiction and non-fiction, as well as scholarly essays, mostly on monsters and strange Edwardian literature. She has a finished novel, Mythologies, which spans the last decade of the 19th century through WWII, following a family who emmigrates from Europe only to be sent back a generation later to fight WWI. She is currently working on several essays and another novel, currently untitled. The second novel follows a 30-something adjunct lecturer, living in New York City and coping with the death of her closest friend while simultaneously having an affair with her friend’s ex-husband. It’s about grief and sex, it’s very juicy but also extremely literary. 

Some of Jessica’s favorite books as representative titles include Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony, and God and The Autobiography of Red, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Roberto Bolaño’s 2066, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Her personal site is here and she can be found on social media @jessdenz.

Dan White is a current Ph.D. Candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois-Chicago. A graduate of the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Otis College in Los Angeles, he was a Fellow at Stony Brook University’s BookEnds program for the 2020-2021 year. He teaches fiction workshop and introductory writing courses at UIC, as well as a graduate course on narrative theory and the work of Rachel Cusk in the MFA Program at Roosevelt University. His project at both graduate school and his fellowship was The Seachamber, a literary work exploring a young woman’s consciousness as her inner ambition collides with the constraints of family at the wedding of her younger sister in 1994 Santa Monica. The Seachamber was longlisted for the Electric Book Award from Alternating Current Press. His second novel project, The Winemakers, asks questions about the price of memory and the possibilities of art across a single night in contemporary Los Angeles.

His PhD work centers around a single protagonist, Emily, within a reimagined Hamlet. The first project in the progression, The Nunnery, is set in contemporary Chicago and California and charged by a search for the depths to which narrational movement can verisimilarly render lived inner experience. That manuscript is on submission, and was recently longlisted by Yes Yes Books. In the meantime, he is at work on a new project, a campus novel following that same character, Emily, a bit earlier in life, when things weren’t quite so complex. In the critical realm he is working on a scholarly manuscript studying the use of narration in Rachel Cusk’s books, centered on narrative theory, Wittgenstein, and feminism.

In addition to his work with Indirect and L’Esprit, he has served as the Prose Editor for West Trade Review literary journal since 2020. He also serves as the Director of Prose for Iron Oak Editions, which he helped launch in 2023. Outside of the novel form, he writes short fiction, book reviews, and critical essays. His work has appeared in Florida Review, 3:AM, Another Chicago Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Chicago Review of Books, among several other publications.

His literary tastes gravitate towards fearless, verisimilar, consciousness-forward writing in the High Modernist tradition. While reading, he tends to keep the opening sentence of Mrs Dalloway close at hand, as it is tattooed on his arm. He especially enjoys innovative, intelligent third-person fiction and is wary of first-person present tense. Literature that entangles philosophy, especially that of language and experience, often resonates. He is further drawn to unorthodox and sophisticated uses of free-indirect style and other techniques for rendering inner life; work that takes risks, that displays understanding of theory, and that plays with time, memory, and freely-associative thought; quotidian realities of life; and anything in the wonderfully chaotic stream-of-consciousness quartier.

Alongside Mrs Dalloway, some of his favorite books as representative titles include Pride and Prejudice, The Sound and The Fury, Speedboat, Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park, The Last Supper, and Parade, Annie Ernaux’s Passion Simple, Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, Lucy Ives’ Life is Everywhere, Marguerite Duras’ Emily L., Anna Burns’ Milkman, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, Lucy Corin’s The Swank Hotel, Aysegül Savaş’ White on White, Emily Hall’s The Longcut, Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Minds and, bien sûr, Ulysses.

A Chicago ex-pat, he lived in Long Beach, California for nine years, where he taught writing at Otis College and frequented the beach to hide from writer’s block. In an earlier life he earned his J.D. from Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. In an even earlier one he earned a B.A. in European History from Roosevelt University in Chicago, in the same building where Margaret Anderson founded The Little Review. He has returned to Chicago to pursue his Ph.D., proving that time is an illusory construct. His personal site is here, and he can be found on Instagram and Bluesky @dwhitethewriter.

Meghan Dahn grew up in the middle of the woods. She is the author of Domain (selected by Jennifer Chang for the Burnside Review Press Award, 2022) and the chapbook Lucid Animal (winner of the Harbor Review Editor’s Prize, 2021). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Boston Review, the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Fence, Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Journal, Lana Turner, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry Northwest, and Small Orange, among others.

She was selected for the 2017 Best New American Poets anthology by Natalie Diaz and she was a winner of the 2014 Discovery/92nd Street Y Poetry Prize (judges: Rosanna Warren, Susan Mitchell, and John Ashbery). She has an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, teaches at Fordham University, and lives in New York with her family.

Millie Oliver is a BA and MA graduate in English Literature from UCL in London where she currently lives. Originally from Manchester, Millie is now starting her career as a writer, editor and antiquarian bookseller based in London and has been on the Indirect Books team since November 2025 as a prose reader and more recently as a publicist. 

Since finishing her Masters, Millie combines her work with Indirect with her own writing, including experimental forays into novel writing, short stories and even comedy screenplays. Millie is an avid collector of first edition books and has recently started an internship at one of London’s most prestigious rare book shops, giving her the opportunity to learn about the fascinating world of antiquarian bookselling.

Millie’s MA dissertation explored the role of women and the drawing room in the writings of Edith Wharton’s New York novels. Beyond Wharton, she has a special interest in modernist literature, and female writers in particular, particularly the works of Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Jean Rhys and Virginia Woolf. Millie is hoping to pursue her dreams of being an author by doing an MFA in Creative Writing in the next year or two.

Samantha Stone is a writer, theatre artist, and educator. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from the George Washington University and an MFA in Playwriting from Fordham/Primary Stages program. She currently teaches composition writing, literature, and oral communications at Fordham, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) and Writopia Lab. Her work focuses on creating literature and theatre for social change by shedding light on prominent issues through new lenses. She writes fiction, creative nonfiction, plays, and screenplays, and is currently working on a novel among various dramatic projects. 

In early 2025, Samantha published a children’s book, The Kitchen Magician, suitable for readers ages 4-8, with Nightingale Books, an imprint of Pegasus Publishers. Her award winning one-act play, Negative Space, made its world premiere at the Gene Frankel Theatre Festival in the summer of 2025 and her play, Finding Olive, premiered at the SheNYC Summer Theater Festival two years prior. While at Fordham, her play, Tommy’s Girls, premiered in April 2018 at the Walkerspace at Soho Rep. The previous year her one-act, Why I Don’t Sleep, was presented in the Primary Stages Studios. This play was also a finalist for the Ivoryton Playhouse’s POWER PASSION PROSE Women Playwrights’ Initiative for 2018. Her play The Third Space Theory was a finalist for the Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers in 2019. Her first full-length play, The Muscle in Question, made its world premiere at the 20th annual New York International Fringe Festival in 2016.

Samantha is drawn to naturalistic and evocative text that prioritizes setting and character over action and plot. Some of her favorite books include A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Hour of the Star and Água Vive by Clarice Lispector, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, and the play W;t by Margaret Edson. She also loves the multigeneric work of Nora Ephron, Vivian Gornick, and Renata Adler, and the plays of Annie Baker, Rajiv Joseph, Martyna Majok, and Lillian Hellman.

Her website is samanthajunestone.com and she can be found on instagram @samanthajunestone.

Alexandra Romero is a poet and writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Hunter College’s MFA in creative writing, where she completed her thesis poetry manuscript Darkroom in 2023. While in grad school, she served as poetry co-editor for the MFA-run literary magazine Solar Journal, and she has since served on editorial teams for independent publications in arts, culture, and literature. 

Her literary taste tends toward writing that pushes the boundaries of form, especially that which innovates and surprises at the sentence level. She is excited by fiction that takes risks narratively and thematically; in poetry she looks for work that departs from the expected word, line break, or sentiment. Some enduring authors and poets representative of her taste are Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Clarice Lispector, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, John Ashbery, and Lucie Brock-Broido. She lately enjoys contemporary work from Emily Skillings, Tony Tulathimutte, C. Violet Eaton, Garrett Caples, and Reid Kurkerewicz. 

Alexandra’s own work has appeared in TINGE, Kestrel, and other publications in print and online. Her poem “Homes on the Hudson”, published by Apricity Magazinein 2025, earned her the honor of participating as a panelist at the issue’s showcase event in Austin, Texas. She is currently working on a full-length collection of poetry and a fiction manuscript. 

Outside of literature, her interests include fashion, architecture and design, and art history. She and her partner share their Manhattan apartment with their beloved cat, Tiny, who was born in a trash can and acts like it.

Maetavee Genevieve Shubeck is a writer and visual artist. She holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her work has appeared in Emocean and Hobart, among other publications. She is from Thailand.

Kale Hensley is a poet and visual artist from West Virginia. Their writing, rooted in mysticism, dissent, and a love of regional myth, has appeared in Gulf Coast, Booth, Evergreen Review, Sonora Review, Epiphany, and other journals, with several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. They are the recipient of the 2026 Elmer Kelton Prize for Poetry and a finalist for GASHER Press’ 2025 Chapbook Prize.

Charlie Ericson has written prose for Strange Pilgrims, The Atlantic, & Aeon. His more buttoned-up, peer-reviewed writing has appeared in Contemporary Literature, Renaissance Drama, and The James Joyce Literary Supplement. His poems are in Spectra, CoMa, JAKE, Measure, The Hellebore, and The Evansville Review. He earned a doctorate for writing a dissertation called Knowing in a Novel Way: Epistemological Claims of Aesthetic Autonomy. He lives in Cleveland, where he teaches modernism at Oberlin College. When he isn’t outwardly engaged in the literary arts he butchers Dave van Ronk tunes on guitar and prepares for a marathon he may never run, then uses this lifestyle to excuse the number of dishes he confits. 

The literary Frankenstein Charlie dreams he’ll one day encounter would have Henry Green’s ear for dialogue, W.S. Graham’s ambition, Ralph Ellison’s scope, Flann O’Brien’s sense of play, Vladimir Nabokov’s polish, Henry James’s subtlety, George Schuyler’s brazenness, Gertrude Stein’s linguistic rigor, Mina Loy’s mystique, and Djuna Barnes’s distaste for publicity. Barring that, he’ll happily settle for a new Garth Greenwell novel, Becca Rothfeld essay, or John Wilkinson poem.

Luke Alchin-Scolnick is a writer and communications professional. He received his B.A. in Communications Studies from California State University, Northridge and his M.A. in Communications Management from the University of Southern California. Luke writes fiction and nonfiction, and you can find his nonfiction writing on his Substack page, The Backshift. He is currently an Associate Editor at the Militant Grammarian and the Manager of Communications for a start-up in the alcohol industry.

Luke tends to favor media and societal analyses, as well as long and winding narrative structures. He’s drawn to both modernist and postmodern fiction (when he isn’t reading an Agatha Christie novel) and especially enjoys a well constructed satirical edge. His own writing attempts to reflect on personal feelings and cultural observations and uses those as tentpole ideas for each essay and story. He writes nonfiction political and cultural criticism, and mostly horror/thriller nonfiction. He is currently working on a number of horror shorts, with plans to write a novel with the working title Gin Mill. He is also currently working on several essays on the topics of basketball and American culture, mundanity, and modern influences on film. 

Some of Luke’s favorite books as representative titles include Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Charles Portis’s Masters of Atlantis, Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, and, for good measure, Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House. His Substack is here and she can be found on social media @luukewarm.

Evann Orleck-Jetter is a writer, editor, and PhD candidate from a small town in Vermont, United States. Her non-fiction essays have been published in The Washington Post and HuffPost. A childhood trip to London sparked a fascination with the city’s morbid history (particularly Henry VIII and his six unlucky wives) that confirmed her taste for the macabre. Evann’s resultant sense of wonder, braided with menace– and humor– has shaped all her writing. After graduating with a degree in English from the University of Vermont, she moved to London in 2021 to complete a master’s degree in Creative Writing from City St. George’s, University of London.

Evann recently finished her first novel, Clowning, about a young woman whose visit to see her mother in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is upended by a series of bizarre clown attacks. She is beginning work on a second novel, tentatively titled Waitsfield, as part of a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire. The novel centers on a cursed town whose inhabitants appear to be going mad, only to be revealed as victims of environmental poisoning. Alongside the novel, her critical dissertation explores representations of rivers in women’s climate fiction. As a writer, Evann is inspired by Viktor Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization, Freud’s theory of the uncanny, and the enduring challenge, and beauty, of rendering everyday human existence in fresh and unsettling ways. 

As a reader, Evann is drawn to vivid, surreal, and strange worlds–and to emerging from a book with a renewed sense of empathy. Her favorite novels include Olga Tocarchuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Karen Joy Fowler’s We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Do Not Say We have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. She also has a deep love of short fiction. Her favorite short story of all time is Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, which left her profoundly unnerved; the sinister, and ironically named Arnold Friend has inspired one of the characters in her current novel. She enjoys Virginia Woolf’s short stories for their remarkable interiority and use of stream-of- consciousness, particularly The New Dress.

Hannah Elsie is a New York City–based editor. She studied English literature and has since worked across editorial teams at various independent presses and publications.

Some of her favorite books include Taking Care by Joy Williams, Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, Victory by Joseph Conrad, and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Having grown up among cornfields and now mostly among concrete, she has lately returned to the nature writing of Henry David Thoreau and Wendell Berry.

Outside of reading, she enjoys taking her cat, Snowy, on walks through Central Park and assisting her sister with work in fashion.