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. You can join Up the Staircase Quarterly on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr for updates and news.

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April Michelle Bratten

Editor-in-Chief

April Michelle Bratten co-founded Up the Staircase Quarterly in 2008. Her work has appeared in Southeast Review, Zone 3, THRUSH Poetry Journal, and Screen Door Review: Literary Voices of the Queer South. She is also the Vice President of the new nonprofit Tandem Reader Awards.  April's latest chapbook, Anne with an E, was published by dancing girl press. You can learn more at @aprilmbratten and aprilmichellebratten.com.

Len Lawson

Poetry Reader / Reviewer

Len Lawson is the author of the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press) and editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press). He is a Ph.D. student in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He won the 2016 Jasper Magazine Artist of the Year Award in Literary Arts. Len is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a three-time nominee for the Best of the Net Anthology. He received a poetry fellowship from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a poetry residency from Vermont Studio Center. He has taught college composition and literature in South Carolina for seven years.

Jade Mitchell

Poetry Reader

Jade Mitchell is a poet residing in Glasgow, Scotland. She is a poetry reader for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has been featured in Words Dance Publishing, Persephone’s Daughters, L’Éphémère Review, Rising Phoenix Review, and others. Her work can be found on her blog: vagabondly.tumblr.com.

Margaret Stawowy

Associate 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.

Travis Chi Wing Lau

Reviewer

Travis Chi Wing Lau is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Department of English. His research interests include eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, the history of medicine, and disability studies. His academic writing has been published in Journal of Homosexuality, Romantic Circles, and English Language Notes. His creative writing has appeared in Atomic, Feminine Inquiry, Wordgathering, Assaracus, Rogue Agent, and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology.

Rhiannon Thorne

Associate Interviewer

Rhiannon Thorne is an associate interviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Additionally, she works as the managing editor of cahoodaloodaling, and as the president of Tandem Reader Awards. A 2016 BinderCon LA Scholarship recipient, Rhiannon’s poetry has been published in Black Warrior Review, Manchester Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, among others.

Jennifer Martelli

Reviewer

Jennifer Martelli’s debut poetry collection, The Uncanny Valley, was published in 2016 by Big Table Publishing Company. She is also the author of the chapbook, Apostrophe and the chapbook, After Bird, from Grey Book Press. Her work has appeared in Thrush, [Pank], Glass Poetry Journal, The Heavy Feather Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is the co-curator for MER VOX Folio. 

Jeannine Ouellette

Reviewer

Jeannine Ouellette is the author of several nonfiction books and the children's picture book Mama Moon. Her work has appeared in december magazine, Nowhere, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Rake, Utne, and others. Recently her work has received a second-place Curt Johnson Prose Award for fiction as well as an honorable mention in the Glimmer Train fiction open and a finalist selection in the Barry Lopez Creative Nonfiction Contest. Jeannine is founder and director of Elephant Rock, a creative writing program in Minneapolis, and is working on her first novel.