Inside the Issue, is an interview series I host with writers whose stories are published in each issue of Southern Indiana Review (SIR). SIR is a literary journal housed in the English Department in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana and publishes bi-annually, in the fall and spring of each year. For more information, or to purchase issues, please click the link above.
The music playing during the opening and credits is from Jacob Sunderlin’s “Ojos Primitivos.” To find this song and the rest of Jacob’s amazing music, go to his Bandcamp page:
https://jacobsunderlin.bandcamp.com/. To find out more about Jacob’s music and his poetry, check out https://www.jacobsunderlin.com/.
Many thanks to Ron Mitchell, SIR Editor-in-Chief, the English Department and College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, and Gage Lynn and Peyton Peters for assistance with video layout and design.
The music playing during the opening and credits is from Jacob Sunderlin’s “Ojos Primitivos.” To find this song and the rest of Jacob’s amazing music, go to his Bandcamp page:
https://jacobsunderlin.bandcamp.com/. To find out more about Jacob’s music and his poetry, check out https://www.jacobsunderlin.com/.
Many thanks to Ron Mitchell, SIR Editor-in-Chief, the English Department and College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, and Gage Lynn and Peyton Peters for assistance with video layout and design.
Spring 2025 Issue
Rebecca Bernard is the author of the story collection Our Sister Who Will Not Die (Mad Creek Books, 2022). Her fiction has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, and South Carolina Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at East Carolina University, and she serves as a fiction editor for The Boiler and the North Carolina Literary Review. For more, visit rebeccaibernard.com
Vincent Czyz is the author of two novels, a short story collection, an essay collection, a novella, and a forthcoming collection of short fiction (September 2025). He is the recipient of two fiction fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts, the W. Faulkner-W. Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Award for Best in Small Press, and the Truman Capote Fellowship at Rutgers University. His stories have appeared in Shenandoah, AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Tin House, Copper Nickel, and Tampa Review, among other publications.
Alex Carolan is a writer based in Baltimore with an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Pinch and the Cimarron Review.
Latifa Ayad is a Libyan-American writer who was born and raised in Sarasota, Florida. She earned her MFA in Fiction at Florida State and is a PhD Candidate in Fiction at Western Michigan University. Ayad is a MacDowell Fellow. Her novel-in-progress was a runner-up for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Ayad has been published in Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wasafiri, and others. She is currently editor-in-chief of Third Coast Magazine. For her complete published work, please visit latifaayad.com.
Fall 2024 Issue
Jake Bartman’s stories have appeared in Story, Ninth Letter, the minnesota review, Columbia Journal, Booth, and elsewhere. His story “Night Swim” earned a 2021 Pushcart special mention, and in 2023, he received his MFA from the University of Florida. He lives in New Mexico. You can find more at https://jakebartman.com/.
Sarah Angileri is originally from Michigan, but she is now based out of New York, where she’s completing her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Before starting her career as a writer, Sarah worked in kitchens as a cook, instructor, and personal chef. She now writes for food and beverage brands and has been published online at Tasting Table and Modern Farmer. “Owning a Dog” is her first fiction publication.
John Fulton’s fiction has been awarded a 2024 NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, twice cited for distinction in the Best American Short Stories, short-listed for the O. Henry Award, and published in numerous journals, including Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Oxford American, The Missouri Review, and The Southern Review. He is the author of four books: The Flounder and Other Stories (Blackwater Press), which was a Poets and Writers Page One New and Noteworthy Book Selection, Retribution (Picador USA), which won the Southern Review Short Fiction Award, the novel More Than Enough (Picador USA), which was a Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers selection, and The Animal Girl, which was a Story Prize Notable Book. He currently lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and directs the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. You can find more at https://johnfulton.net/.
Spring 2024 Issue
Matthew Fiander’s fiction has appeared in Story Magazine, Mid-American Review, Zone 3, Willow Springs, The Massachusetts Review, South Carolina Review, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. He has also written for The New York Times, PopMatters, and other outlets. His debut novel, Ringing in Your Ears, was published by Main Street Rag. Fiander currently lives and works in North Carolina. Twitter/X: @mattfiander https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/pr...
Jaclyn Dwyer's work has appeared in Electric Literature, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, The Pinch, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Her poetry collection, The Bride Aflame, was published by Black Lawrence Press. She lives in Thibodaux, Louisiana, with her husband and four children.
Sam Simas is a queer Luso-American writer and translator. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in New England Review, Copper Nickel, Foglifter, Hunger Mountain, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review, and other literary magazines; his writing has been nominated for several awards and has won Copper Nickel’s Editor’s Prize for Prose, as well as first-place in CRAFT Literary’s First Chapters Contest. He will be attending DISQUIET International summer 2024 as a Luso-American Fellow. Sam is a PhD candidate in fiction at the University of Cincinnati and the contributing fiction editor for the Ocean State Review. www.samsimas.ink
Tom Sokolowski completed an MFA at the University of Central Florida where he was awarded a Provost’s Fellowship. He’s currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University, and his fiction is featured or forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Barcelona Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. A veteran of the Florida Army National Guard, Tom lives in Tallahassee. Find him online at https://www.tomsokowriter.com.
Sarah Walker is from Northeastern Pennsylvania, now living in Greater Boston. She was the 2017 Dennis Lehane Fiction Fellow at the Solstice MFA Creative Writing Program. Her work has appeared in BULL, Carolina Quarterly, Cleaver, Colorado Review, CutBank, Longform Pick of the Week, Maudlin House, New Limestone Review, among others. She was a finalist for the 2022 Robert Day Fiction Award, a finalist for the 2023 Iron Horse Long Story Prize and a semifinalist for the 2023 Story Foundation Prize. Her fiction has been supported by the Tin House Workshop and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is at work on her first novel and story collection. Her website is http://www.sarahwalkerwriter.com; you can also follow her on Instagram at Sarah_jm_walker.
Damien Roos received his MFA in creative writing from The New School and has recently completed his first novel, Church of the New Light. His work has appeared in such outlets as New South Journal, Gravel, and The Colorado Review. By day he works in homeless outreach, formerly in New York City and, currently, in the heart of Appalachia. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and two pets.
Richard Holinger’s fiction, essays, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in The Southern Review, Boulevard, North American Review, The Iowa Review, Western Humanities Review, Witness, Chicago Quarterly Review, Chautauqua, and elsewhere. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and two-time Best of the Net nominee. His book of poetry, North of Crivitz, and collection of essays, Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences, have garnered praise respectively from Kevin Stein, former Illinois Poetry Laureate, and David Hamilton, Editor Emeritus of The Iowa Review. “Not Everybody’s Nice” won the 2012 Split Oak Press Prose Chapbook Contest. Kattywompus Press published “Hybrid Seeds: Little Fictions,” a chapbook of innovative writing. He holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an M.A. in English from Washington University. He facilitates the Night Writers Workshop and writes a bimonthly newspaper column for Shaw Media. He has taught on the university, community college, and secondary school levels. He lives west of Chicago far enough to see fox, deer, turkeys, blue herons, and bald eagles occasionally pass by.
Fall 2023 Issue
Andrew Furman is a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and teaches in its MFA program in creative writing. His fiction and creative nonfiction frequently engage with the Florida outdoors, but he has also written about Maine, Jewish identity, basketball, lighthouses, swimming, and cast-iron cookware. His essays and stories have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, Oxford American, The Southern Review, Santa Monica Review, Ecotone, Willow Springs, Poets & Writers, Terrain.org, Flyway, Potomac Review, and The Florida Review. He is the author, most recently, of the novels Jewfish (Little Curlew Press, 2020) and Goldens Are Here (Green Writers Press, 2018), and the memoir Bitten: My Unexpected Love Affair with Florida (University Press of Florida, 2014), which was named a finalist for the ASLE Environmental Book Award. His novel, The World That We Are, set in Maine like his SIR story, "The Body Knows," will be released by Regal House Publishing in 2025. He lives in south Florida with his family. https://www.andrewfurmanwriter.com
Hannah Thurman is a Brooklyn-based writer originally from Raleigh, North Carolina. The winner of the Florida Review's 2023 Editor's Prize for Fiction, her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Meridian, and others. She has been chosen for conferences/residencies at Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Vermont Studio Center, and VCCA. https://www.hannahpenrosethurman.com
Mat Goldberg's short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, and Boulevard, among others. He's received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council and a Special Mention for a Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas and a degree in engineering from Duke University. His recently completed novel, Roan, is a literary noir set in rural Missouri.
Brigitte Hoarau lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and holds an MFA from Georgia State University. She serves as an assistant professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College, where she is developing an undergraduate creative writing program. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Southeast and elsewhere.