New editors join the pages

We're a few days away from the opening of the reading period for Versal 8. So a bit of news: I'm very pleased to welcome four new editors to Versal:

Jennifer K. Dick joins our poetry team. She is the author of Fluorescence (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2004) and Enclosures (Blazevox, 2007). Originally from Iowa and now living in Paris, she has just completed her PhD at Paris III in Comp Lit, teaches for L’EHESS & creative writing for the École Polytechnique. She writes regular columns for Tears in the Fence in the UK (on poetry) & EyePreferParis (on artists working in Paris). She also co-coordinates the IVY writer's series in Paris and with poet Sandy Florian started the 60-poet collaborative project Rewords.

BJ Hollars is joining the fiction team. BJ is a 25 year old MFA grad student at The University of Alabama where he lives with his wife and his dog. He edited the recently released anthology You Must Be This Tall To Ride: Contemporary Writers Take You Inside The Story from Writer's Digest Books and he also edits YouMustBeThisTallToRide.net (currently taking submissions!). He's the former nonfiction editor for Black Warrior Review and former assistant fiction editor.

Matthew Sadler is coming on board our poetry team. His first chapbook is coming out with Flying Guillotine Press, in Brooklyn, and he publishes poems in literary magazines around the US. He lives with his family in Detroit, Michigan where he teaches English composition and essay writing, as well as film studies.

Shayna Schapp is joining our art team. Shayna is an American artist living and working in Amsterdam. Shayna received a B.A. in Art from Houghton Wesleyan College in 2003. Her photographs, drawings and sculptures have frequently been exhibited in the U.S. and are a part of several private collections. In addition to her work as an artist she is an instructor for the Interactive / Media / Design department at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague and runs Lately 3, a creative collaboration focusing on book projects and other printed matter.

It's exciting to welcome these editors to our pages, all talented writers & artists themselves. They have all been involved in Versal in some way in the past. Matt and I go back a long way together. We met in an undergrad poetry class with Patricia Goedicke at the University of Montana. That would have been 1998. He's been in three issues of Versal over the years: 1, 3 and 5. And many of us have known Jennifer since a Versal reading in 2005 at The Red Wheelbarrow in Paris - which I still remember clearly because I had the honor to read alongside Marilyn Hacker that day. A selection from Jennifer's translation of work from Albane Gellé is published in Versal 7. BJ's short story "Kin" is found in Versal 6. And Shayna co-created the HERE project with Sarah last year, and yes we're also getting married.

So a big welcome to the new editors! And a reminder to all of them to download Skype or update their apps to the latest version, because we're going to need it. Versal's transatlantic on all teams this year save art.