Adam Day is the author of Model of a City in Civil War as well as the recipient of a 2010 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. His work has appeared in Poetry London, Kenyon Review, Poetry Ireland, American Poetry Review, Stand, Iowa Review, London Magazine, and elsewhere. He also directs the Baltic Writing Residency in Latvia, Scotland, and Bernheim Forest.

Amy Leigh Wicks is living in the beginning of a love story that is more dramatic than anything she writes about. This year she moved to Wellington from New York City with her husband to begin her PhD in Poetry at IIML. She is the author of Orange Juice and Rooftops. and some recent work can be found on The Best American Poetry blog and DrDoctor's Podcast series. She likes motorcycles, outdoor feasts with chandeliers and not knowing how the story ends.

Ben Egerton lives, writes and teaches in Wellington. He completed the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2014, and was editor of that year's edition of Turbine. Ben's work has been published in print and online in New Zealand, Australia and in the United Kingdom. When he's not writing, Ben likes to walk his dog, ride his bike, and play hockey.

Carolyn DeCarlo is an American-born writer growing roots in New Zealand. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has written a handful of chapbooks: Strawberry Hill (Pangur Ban Party, 2013), Green Place (Enjoy Journal, 2015), and with Jackson Nieuwland both Twilight Zone (NAP, 2013) and Bound: An Ode to Falling in Love (Compound Press, 2014). Other recent writing appears in PANK, Sweet Mammalian, Minarets, West Wind Review, and the Fanzine, among other places.

Catherine Robertson has published four novels that have all been #1 New Zealand bestsellers. This work is an an excerpt from her short novel, The Break, submitted as a thesis for her MA from the IIML, 2015.

Chris Tse's writing has recently appeared in Sport, Cordite Poetry Review, IKA, and Queen Mob's Tea House. His first book of poems is How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (AUP, 2014).

Elizabeth Farris is a recent graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. Originally from the States, she has written short stories, flash fiction, plays, screenplays, and a musical libretto. Her short stories have been published online and in anthologies in the United States and Australia.

Eugenio Montale was the 1975 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. During his lifetime, he published over 20 books of poetry, prose, and translation, and is widely considered to be one of modern Italy's greatest lyric poets. He died in 1981.

Jonathan Galassi is president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has been translating Montale's work since 1982. His books of poems are Morning Run, North Street and Left-Handed. In 2015 he released his first novel, MUSE.

Gregory O'Brien was the 2015 Stout Memorial Fellow at Victoria University. These poems were inspired by a ceramic work made by Tony Fomision and included in the exhibition 'Empire of Dirt' (curated by Doris De Pont) at Objectspace, Auckland, in November/December 2015.

Hannah Mettner is a Gisborne poet living and working in Wellington. She is one of the editors of Sweet Mammalian. She has been most recently published in Food Court, Rejectamenta, Hue & Cry, Sport and more.

Harry Ricketts has published ten collections of poems, most recently Half Dark (VUP, 2015).

hela trol pis is. 666 idk email me bldbcu@gmail.com lol

Helen has worked for government as a policy writer for most of the 21st century. She spent this year writing a memoir about family and fertility as part of the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. She lives in Pukerua Bay with her partner and five year old son.

Jackson Nieuwland likes unicorns.

Jake Arthur is writing a Master's thesis about gardens and poetry. He has poems published in Sweet Mammalian and an essay on poetics in Poetry NZ. The title “Changed Opinion as to Flowers" is taken from Juliet Fleming’s essay of the same name, which is part of a book called Renaissance Paratexts.

Jane Arthur completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2015. Her poems have been published in Sport, Ika, and Sweet Mammalian. She lives in Wellington and has a dog.

Johnny McCaughan is originally from Dunedin, but has lived in Wellington since 2010. His non-fiction has been published in Magneto, and he blogs occasionally for Vic Books.

Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by Victoria University Press in 2012. A group of her poems appeared in 2013 in the UK publication Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). A second book there’s a medical name for this was published by Victoria University Press in 2014. She has just completed her third collection of poems, rabbit rabbit, with the assistance of a Creative New Zealand grant and this collection will also be published by Victoria University Press in 2016.

Louise Wrightson completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML at Victoria University, Wellington, in 2015. She was in the Poetry and Creative Non-Fiction stream. She describes the experience as less like a stream and more like the Irrawaddy River in full flood. The poems ‘Seconds,' 'The Equator,’ and the prose piece 'The Neighbour’ were written for her thesis, Grace. Her website is louisewrightson.com.

Lynne Kohen is a writing student and entrepreneur who lives in Ruby Bay, Nelson. Her poetry awards include second and third placements in the New Zealand Poetry Society’s international poetry competition, and first place equal in the Page and Blackmore’s annual poetry competition.

‘Dear Mr Brasch’, ‘Oh Road!’ and ‘How will we look to them’ are part of Lynn’s current project Oh Road! — a collection of poems and essays documenting the arrival in Kāpiti of the MacKays to Peka Peka Expressway. Lynn Jenner is the author of Dear Sweet Harry, winner of the Jessie McKay Best First Book of Poetry in 2010, and Lost and Gone Away, published in 2015. There are samples of both books and lots of other poems, interviews and reviews on Lynn’s website Pinklight.nz.

Meryl Richards lives in Paekakariki where artists, writers and creatives of all types love to congregate. She is a recent graduate of the MA programme at the IIML and has learnt the importance of keeping your nerve and turning up at your desk each day. Her two young sons hope to become rich off her earnings as an author one day.

Nick Ascroft is a Dunedin poet in exile. He has published two collections of poetry with Victoria University Press, was the 2003 Burns Fellow, and will release a book on five-a-side soccer-slash-football with Bloomsbury in 2016.

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington-based writer and broadcaster. He is the author of How To Listen To Pop Music (2004) and 100 Essential New Zealand Albums (2009), and presents The Sampler on Radio New Zealand National. In 2015 he completed the MA in Creative Writing at the IIML with a memoir about New Zealand music in the 1970s. The piece published here is an extract from that memoir, Goneville, for which he won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing.

Nina Powles is the author of the poetry chapbook Girls of the Drift (Seraph Press, 2014) and self-published poetry zines (auto)biography of a ghost and Underwater Dreams. For her 2015 MA in Creative Writing, she wrote a poetic biography of stars, ghosts, and bioluminescent creatures.

Paula King lives in the Manawatu with her daughter's cats Frank and Tui.

In 2015 Sarah completed her MA with the IIML, writing a collection of poems titled &. Many of her poems are named after keys on the keyboard and explore themes relating to language and love. She knows a lot about punctuation.

Simon Gennard lives in Wellington.

Sue Wootton is a Dunedin writer. Her website is suewootton.com.

Sugar Magnolia Wilson lives in Wellington but hails from the Far North. She has had poems published in Turbine, Shenandoah, Verge: Errance, Sport, Foodcourt and Hue & Cry among others. She co-edits the online literary journal Sweet Mammalian with Hannah Mettner and Morgan Bach.

Tim Corballis is the author of four novels, most recently R.H.I. (Victoria University Press, 2015), as well as a large number of shorter works including fiction, reviews, essays and art writing. He has a doctorate from The University of Auckland, focusing on the possibilities of aesthetic theory in antipodean contexts. In 2015 he was the Victoria University of Wellington / Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence.

Vana is a Wellington born poet who has returned after eight years marooned on Crete. She has published one collection of poetry, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves, and her writing has appeared in Sweet Mammalian, Sport, Turbine, Poetry NZ, and Essential New Zealand Poems.

Vona Groarke has published six collections with Gallery Press in Ireland, the latest being X - a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring, 2014. The current Editor of Poetry Ireland Review, she teaches poetry at the University of Manchester in the U.K. Her Selected Poems is due in early 2016.

Whitney completed an MA at the IIML in 2015. She lives by the beach in Whanganui.

Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle is the author of Autobiography of a Marguerite (Hue & Cry Press 2014). She lives in Auckland. She can be found on Twitter @zarahbm.