Poetry
James Champion
He/Him
James Champion is a poet. He is confused about how much poetry should be work and how much it should be intuition. But he works hard to listen to his intuition, that little glass hammer in his mind. He likes coins in parking lots after it rains. He likes forgotten wishing wells, ghost towns, loon songs echoing off lakes, yarn, moss. He thinks being in love is the most important thing.
Daniel Crasnow
He/Him
Daniel Crasnow is a multi-genre writer and scholar born and raised in Central Florida. Beyond the authorial and Jewish communal world, Daniel is a big fan of reading, D&D, philosophy, cooking, and spinning yarn. He is gay and Jewish. His poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction is published in, or forthcoming from New Voices Magazine, The Oakland Review, Litro Magazine, and more. His work can also be found on Facebook using the hashtag: @Daniel.Crasnow.Writes.
Maddie Whelan
She/Her
Maddie is a poetry MFA candidate from the Boston area. She holds a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing, and a minor in film studies from Merrimack College. She writes about her own experiences in life and love, history, gay stuff, Greek mythology, and whatever else interests them. Moving to Oregon has gotten them interested in scrapbooking and zines. Concerts, thrifting and going to the club are Maddie's happy places.
Cayla White
They/Them
Cheyenne Hollowell
She/Her
Cheyenne Hollowell is a poetry MFA candidate from Dothan, Alabama. She graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2023, majoring in English and minoring in Public Health. Most recently, Cheyenne worked as a communications intern for UAB's Division of Nephrology and as an on-call shelter specialist at HOPE Place domestic violence shelter. Her poetry explores themes of love, longing, and funky bugs! While her career goals change with the tides, she is endlessly passionate about the field of social work and community health, aspiring to one day become a social worker.
Anmol Priya Desai
She/He/They
Editor-in-Chief of 45th parallel. Their work explores themes of family and gender in the realm of the absurd and surreal. She is deeply interested in mixing the sacred and the profane. You can find him yearning for the sea.
Elyssa Cook
He/She/They
Elyssa is a writer, educator, and PRAx Fellow from Shasta County, CA by way of the Twin Cities, MN. She writes about grief, gender/queerness, girlhood, the body, and the rugged, fragile landscape they call home. His PRAx project is a series of writings centered around Shasta crayfish (California's last native crayfish), power, relationality, and resilience. Elyssa enjoys climbing, crafting, garden time, finding teeth and bones in the forest, rediscovering their inner feral child, etc. Whatever the opposite of nonchalant is.
Fiction
Robert Darling
He/Him
Robert is a fiction writer who grew up in Northwestern Wisconsin, where he spent much of his youth driving around on county roads. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from UW Eau Claire and writes about rural Wisconsin, addiction, and hope. He loves getting outside; whether that’s going on hikes or just driving around on the hunt for out of the way haunts.
Amber Harris
She/Her
Amber Harris is a writer and teacher from Alabama. She writes fiction primarily and dabbles in poetry and nonfiction. Amber’s current projects are a literary fiction novel about a group of young Black teens and how they foster community while dealing with different issues, a collection of creative nonfiction essays that explore themes of home, and a series of short stories about familial connection and community.
Julian Shen
He/Him
Julian is a fiction MFA candidate from Berkeley, California. Before arriving in Corvallis, he worked as a journalist in New York City, covering education and city politics. He holds a BA in English from Columbia University
Jem Braithwaite
He/Him
Jem Braithwaite is a fiction writer from Brighton, England. He previously worked in a binocular shop in Scotland. His short stories tend to center around items of food - most recently, an Italian sandwich. He enjoys walking through forests with his wife and their small dog Noodle.
Alice Markham-Cantor
She/Her
Alice Markham-Cantor is a fiction candidate from Brooklyn, New York. After years working as a freelance reporter and a fact-checker for New York Magazine, she’s come to Oregon to return to her one true love of making stuff up. Her first book, The Once & Future Witch Hunt (2024), was cross-genre, combining fiction and nonfiction to investigate past and present witchcraft accusation. Alice particularly likes writing about legacy, the lost, what it means to believe in something, and (to paraphrase) stories in which characters happen to politics, or politics happen to them.
Creative Nonfiction
Sofia Donato-Baez
She/Her
Sofia Donato-Baez is a creative nonfiction essayist and poet born in Puerto Rico and raised in Florida. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of South Florida. Sofía’s writing revolves around the natural world, imperialism, identity, heritage and love. Her work lives in liminal spaces and her mission is devoted to unity. When away from her journal, she can be found lying in the sun or befriending creatures.
Preston Sabetpour
He/Him
Preston is an essayist and poet from Austin, Texas. He holds a B.A. in creative writing with a minor in journalism from Texas Tech University. When he isn’t reading, writing or playing music, you can find him out enjoying nature and the wildlife—or somewhere lost in the mountains.
Giovanni Ferrari Wolfram
He/Him
Giovanni Ferrari Wolfram is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Oregon State University. Originally from New York, he has lived in Florence, Gambier, Santa Fe, and now Corvallis. His work will appear in the Spring 2026 issue of The Florida Review as the runner-up in their annual essay contest. He writes about family, pop culture, and how media shapes identity.
Hyrum Blanchard
They/Them
Hyrum’s work explores the intersections of religion, doubt, and colonization in the American West. When not haunting the library, you can find Hyrum riding loops on the bus, binging bad tv, and picking things up and putting them down again in thrift stores.
Celestina Agabi
She/Her
Celestina is a writer from Maryland. She holds a BA in English from Salisbury University where she developed a love for writing about cultural inheritance as well as how people conceptualize and create a home for themselves. In her free time she may be found watching videos on interior design or wandering through a Smithsonian Museum.
Acadia Currah
She/Her
Acadia is an essayist from Ottawa, Ontario, She graduated with a BFA in creative writing from The University of British Columbia in 2025. She loves writing about religion, childhood, lesbian nonsense, and Gilmore Girls. When she isn’t writing, she can be found listening to Paul Simon & The Bee Gees, mainlining black coffee, or shamefully eating green olives out of the jar in the dead of night.
Georgia Gibbons
She/Her
Georgia is a lifelong New Englander who joins OSU's Nonfiction MFA cohort from that other Portland (Maine). She’s been writing for a long time, by turns in the magazine world, the advertising industry, and most recently, in public and government affairs. Her personal work is often about relationship dynamics, defense mechanisms, and the eternal quest for dopamine.