new year / new river

can't not pop up for the new year!!
2015 new rivers from:
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Xui Avila was born in Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas where he earned his B.A. in English from UH-D. In Houston, he worked for several outreach programs including Writers in the Schools, Voices Breaking Boundaries, and Talento Bilingue de Houston.  He was accepted into LSU’s Creative Writing Program in 2010 and earned his MFA in the Spring of 2013.  Much of his poetry consists of complicating and compounding the human anatomy, the desert terrain, with religious rite and iconography.  He is currently piecing together a chapbook version of his larger work des-milagros. 

Claire Dixon was born in England and grew up in Canada, an experience that tempered her general moodiness with excessive politeness and also gave her minor nerve damage in the form of three lightly frostbitten toes. When it's cold, her toes feel like they are floating loose in her socks like Lincoln logs. She has an MFA from LSU and recently won first place for poetry in the Words and Music/Faulkner Wisdom Writing Competition. She has embraced the cliche of being a writer with a library science degree and works in records management. In her spare time, she can be found overinstagramming trees, food and her two year old daughter.

Charles Garrett, has published no books; has no published collections for you to buy or pretend to care about. He has no stake in making you like him or his words, but you will undoubtedly love his voice. He does not do radio, nor does he sing. He loves cooking for his son, and learning the extremes of his own tolerance. He is not a "teaching artist" nor a professional one, but will gladly talk and share with anyone, willing to listen. He doesn't remember the names of most individuals he meets, so repeat your name to him if you care to be remembered. He believes poetry is in the way we bleed, not how much we do so. His poetry is meant to be read at the most inopportune times: in churches, gynecologist waiting rooms, unemployment lines, welfare lines, admissions and financial aid offices, as well as funerals. He knows that you will most likely remain lost after reading/hearing his work. This is by design. He is not here to walk the path for you, merely to light your way, as he tries to find his. Hold your glasses firmly and know that you are in the best place for poetry.

Muriel Leung is a multimedia poet and former teaching artist from Queens, NY. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Coconut, Ghost Proposal, TENDE RLOIN, Nepantla, Bone Bouquet, and others. She is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and is a regular contributor to The Blood-Jet Writing Hour poetry podcast. Currently, she is a MFA candidate in poetry at Louisiana State University where she also serves as the Assistant Editor of New Delta Review.