About

Established in 2008, Up the Staircase Quarterly is an online journal of poetry, art, interviews, and reviews. New issues are published every February, May, August, and November, unless otherwise stated.

UtSQ nominates for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Poems published in UtSQ have appeared in Best of the Net. You can join Up the Staircase Quarterly on Facebook and Twitter for updates and news.

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Editor-in-Chief

April Michelle Bratten co-founded Up the Staircase Quarterly in 2008. Her poetry has appeared in Southeast Review, Cartridge Lit, Zone 3, Thrush, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Screen Door Review: Literary Voices of the Queer South, and more. April's latest chapbook, Anne with an E, was published by dancing girl press. You can follow her on Twitter @aprilmbratten and learn more at aprilmichellebratten.com.

Assistant Editor

Jade Mitchell is a poet and performer based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is an assistant editor for Up the Staircase Quarterly. She earned her BA in Creative Writing, Journalism and English at the University of Strathclyde, where she was awarded the Beatrice Colin Award for her experimental poetry dissertation. Jade recently worked as Director of Poetry on Spark, the debut spoken word show written and performed by Sarah Grant. She has featured at poetry nights in and around Scotland including Loud Poets and Sonnet Youth, and in 2019, competed at the Roundhouse Poetry Slam heats in London. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines, including Inside The Bell Jar and Beech Street Review. She tends to overshare her emotions and talk about Lorde way too much.

Poetry Reader

Anuja Ghimire is trying to make sense of raising two small children in a world and time so different from her childhood. With one foot in the Himalayas and one in Texas, she finds meaning and solace in writing and reading poetry. She is a Nepali immigrant who became an adult in America. Although she wrote since she was five and had two anthologies of Nepali poems published as a teen, she began writing poetry in English in college. Most recently, she was the noteworthy poet of winter issue of UCity Review, and was published in Crack the Spine, and An Elephant Never. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, her chapbook Kathmandu is forthcoming in 2020 from the Unsolicited Press. She works as a senior publisher in an education-based company. She writes poetry, flash and creative nonfiction and teaches poetry to kids at summer camps.

Poetry Reader/Reviewer

Benny Sisson is a trans poet. She earned her BA in Creative Writing and Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where she taught poetry workshops in Tucson Middle Schools as a Writer in Residence for the UA Poetry Center. She is a library assistant, and adjunct instructor at Adelphi University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured with Lunch Ticket, Fearsome Critters, Rinky Dink Press, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Mineola with her partner and their Pug, Gertrude.

Poetry Reader

Emma Miao attends high school in Vancouver, BC. She is a Commended Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2019, and her work appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Emerson Review, Sine Theta Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. She is recognized by the Poetry Institute of Canada and the Poetry Society UK, and she is the founder and executive editor of Surging Tide Magazine, a Vancouver-based magazine dedicated to empowering youth voices. She loves playing piano, swimming, and taking long walks by the beach. She is thrilled to serve as a poetry reader for Up the Staircase Quarterly.

Editor-at-Large

Rhiannon Thorne is an Editor-at-Large for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Additionally, she is the Managing Editor of cahoodaloodaling, a Sundress Publications journal, and has served as the Editorial Assistant for The Southern Review, Co-Director for the Delta Mouth Literary Festival 2018, and Reviews/Interviews Editor for The New Delta Review. A BinderCon Scholarship recipient, her poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Manchester Review, and Midwest Quarterly, among others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, where her thesis The Wooden Boy was selected by Sawako Nakayasu for the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award for Poetry, and has been awarded a three-year University Doctoral Fellowship to study English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. A genderqueer poet from the North Bay, her body resides in Louisiana, save the heart she left behind in Wisconsin.

Reviewer

Travis Chi Wing Lau received his Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania and is a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, the history of medicine, medical humanities, and disability studies. Lau has published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Digital Defoe, and English Language Notes, as well as venues for public scholarship like Public Books and Synapsis. His poetry has appeared in Wordgathering, Glass, The New Engagement, Nat. Brut, Matador Review, Impossible Archetype, and Rogue Agent. His chapbook, The Bone Setter, was recently published with Damaged Goods Press. He currently serves as an editor for The Deaf Poets Society, a disability-run literary magazine, and reviews poetry for Up the Staircase Quarterly and Tupelo Quarterly. travisclau.com

Reviewer

Rachel Stempel is a queer poet pursuing an MFA at Adelphi University, where she also teaches. Originally from the Bronx, she now larps as a Long Island townie. She is a finalist in the New Delta Review's 2020 Chapbook Contest and her work can be found in Kissing Dynamite Poetry and forthcoming in The Nasiona.

Reviewer

Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), as well as the chapbook, After Bird (Grey Book Press, winner of the open reading, 2016). Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, The Bitter Oleander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest). Jennifer Martelli is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is co-poetry editor for The Mom Egg Review.

Reviewer

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves as Co-Director of PEN Birmingham. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, President of Alabama State Poetry Society, Co-Founder of 100,000 Poets for Change Birmingham, and proud board member of Magic City Poetry Festival. A finalist for the 2019 Kurt Brown AWP Prize, the 2019 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the 2019 Frank McCourt Prize, and the 2019 Streetlight Magazine Poetry Contest, Alina won the 2019 River Heron Poetry Prize. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.

Reviewer

Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the memoir The Part That Burns, forthcoming from Split Lip Press. Her stories and essays have appeared in North American Review, Calyx, The Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, Masters Review, and in several anthologies including Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives and Ms. Aligned: Women Writing About Men. Her work has received two Pushcart nominations and has been recognized in many contests including those sponsored by Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Crazyhorse, Chatahoochee Review, Fairy Tale Review, and more. She has received fellowships from Millay Colony and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, teaches and mentors through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop and AWP’s Writer to Writer program, and is the founder of Elephant Rock, an independent writing program based in Minneapolis, where she lives near the banks of the Mississippi.

Interviewer/Reviewer

Margaret Stawowy's poems and stories have appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Atlanta Review, Ecotone Blog, Cricket, West Marin Review, Barnwood Poetry Journal, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She has won awards for her work from both Atlanta Review and Beyond Baroque. Originally from Chicago, she lived in Japan for eight years before relocating to Northern California where she works as a librarian.

Staff Emeritus

Len Lawson, Poetry Reader