Masthead
Our Leadership
Deborah Taffa
Editor-in-Chief
Deborah Taffa is the director of the MFA CW program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant, her memoir WHISKEY TENDER is forthcoming from HARPERCOLLINS HARPER. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, Public Space, Rona Jaffe, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City where she earned her MFA degree, she is a citizen of the Yuma Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Her work can be found in theBoston Review, LARB, A Public Space, Salon, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.deborahtaffa.com.
Bryan Castille
Interim Managing Editor
Bryan Castille is a consultant in strategy and design thinking, and a small business owner. He has worked with several competitive businesses in healthcare, financial services, and insurance, including Fortune 500 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations in the literary arts, organ donation, and others. In 2012 he received the Charles Schupes Prize in Fiction from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Tin House, and the Lamda Literary Writers' Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. He taught for five years at Saint Louis University in St. Louis. Over the past decade he has served River Styx as a fiction reader, Executive Board Co-President, and strategic consultant. Currently he is the interim Managing Editor.
Our Editors
Christa Fraser
Fiction and Multimedia Editor
Christa Fraser currently teaches with the Merritt Writing Program at UC Merced. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been a fiction fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. From 2014 to 2020, she worked as a fiction and creative nonfiction instructor for the International Writing Program's (IWP) six-week Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and has also taught young writers' Fiction and Creative Nonfiction courses for several U.S. Embassies. Her work has been published in The Missouri Review and Shankpainter. Currently, she is working on a novel. Like her ancestors for many generations, she was born and raised in the Central Valley and Central Foothills of California, where she has deep roots.
Danielle Wheeler
Poetry Editor
Danielle Wheeler works for the Magid Center for Writing at the University of Iowa. She was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe fellow in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA. She has editorial experience with The Iowa Review and has poetry and prose in places like Image and Day One. She can be found online at daniwheeler.com.
Carla Crujido
Nonfiction Editor
Carla Crujido is the author of the forthcoming short story collection, “The Strange Beautiful,” as well as the chapbook, “The Bear.” She is also the co-editor of the anthology, “Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World.” Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Yellow Medicine Review, Ricepaper Magazine, Tinfish Press, The Ana, and elsewhere. Carla holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Originally from San Francisco, she now calls Portland home. Instagram | Twitter: @carlacrujido
Micah Bateman
Micah Bateman is an assistant professor of library and information science at the University of Iowa. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop as well as a recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poetry Award. He has served as the founding editor of Petri Press, a contributing editor of Bat City Review, and a reader for The Iowa Review and River Styx.