Masthead
Meet the editors, readers, and interns whose work—from discovering up-and-coming authors to assembling engaging new issues—makes MQR the vibrant journal it is today.
Editor-in-Chief: Khaled Mattawa
Khaled Mattawa is the William Wilhartz Endowed Professor of English Language and Literature. Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya, in 1964 and immigrated to the United States in his teens. Mattawa received a BA in political science and economics from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga before earning an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University, as well as a PhD from Duke University in 2009.
Mattawa’s collections of poetry include Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf Press, 2020); Tocqueville (New Issues, 2010); Amorisco (Ausable, 2008); Zodiac of Echoes(Ausable, 2003); and Ismailia Eclipse (Sheep Meadow Press, 1995). He is also the author of the critical work Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation (Syracuse University Press, 2014).
Mattawa has translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry and coedited three anthologies of Arab American literature. His many books of translation include Adonis: Selected Poems (Yale University Press, 2010); Invitation to a Secret Feast (Tupelo Press, 2008) by Joumana Haddad; A Red Cherry on A White-Tile Floor (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) by Maram Al-Massri; Miracle Maker, Selected Poems of Fadhil Al-Azzawi (BOA Editions, 2004); and Without An Alphabet, Without A Face: Selected Poems of Saadi Youssef (Graywolf Press, 2002).
Poetry Editor: Tyler Dunston
Tyler Dunston is a writer and visual artist. His recent poems have appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Narrative Magazine, Raleigh Review, and other journals, and his critical work can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review (online), and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. in poetry from Boston University and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in English literature at the University of Michigan.
On what kind of submissions he’s looking for: “This is a difficult question for me as I do believe that, to some extent, a poem establishes its own universe, and so I’m wary of imposing guidelines on a universe I have yet to visit. As an editor I try to first ask what a poem is doing rather than what I think of it–a kind of readerly equivalent of listening before I speak. I do often find myself especially drawn to poems that display an awareness of the sound and rhythm of words. Call it music, but only in the most capacious sense of the word, one which does not imply narrow definitions of traditional prosody; to me, the music of a good poem can be harmonious, but it can also be jagged, unconventional, atonal, so to speak. Accordingly, I am open to poems employing meter and rhyme, works which challenge formal conventions, and everything in between. Finally, I am often drawn to poems that are at least as interested in questions as in answers, unafraid of dwelling with what they do not know. That said, in general, I hope that poets’ submissions will not be overdetermined by my editorial taste. I am open to being surprised, to meeting a poem that encourages me to expand my idea of what a poem can be and do. Send me your poem as it wants to be.“
Fiction Editor: Polly Rosenwaike
Polly Rosenwaike’s story collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, was published by Doubleday in 2019. Her fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Glimmer Train, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Colorado Review, New England Review, and other journals. Book reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Millions, Lit Hub, and Dame Magazine. She currently works as a freelance editor in Ann Arbor.
On what kind of submissions she’s looking for:“Literature contains more intimacy than life,” Lorrie Moore said. I’m looking for stories that draw the reader into an intimate relationship with a voice, a consciousness—that give us characters who feel particular and alive. I want to laugh, and cry, and marvel at how the writer has managed to capture truths big and small.
Nonfiction Editor: Bailey Flannery
Bailey Flannery is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in English Language & Literature. Her academic work centers on restorying for social and climate justice, from a public-facing dissertation on late Middle English poetic and dramatic depictions of eco-cataclysms, to podcast projects such as Detroit River Stories and Getting Medieval Lit, the latter of which she is developing through the Modern Language Association’s Public Humanities Incubator. Her non-academic work often ponders refashionings (restoryings) of the self through clothing and style, fitness, digital media presence, and more. She is a passionate proponent of eating peanut butter straight from the jar and the lost arts of handwritten notes and mixtapes, and she is in a love affair with Milwaukee, Chicago, and the Midwest more generally.
On what kind of submissions she’s looking for: “The pieces that I am most drawn to are boldly experimental in subject, style, and form and open a new view or path toward the truth of something through unexpected juxtapositions and associations. These pieces do not settle for wrapping themselves up in a neat little bow but instead wade into the mess and muck of complexity from beginning to end. They also offer themselves in a spirit of generosity to readers and have a clear sense of stakes. I welcome hybrid, genre-bending, or even genre-defying writing, including scholarship that straddles the line between traditionally academic and creative styles and forms.“
Managing Editor: Aram Mrjoian
Aram Mrjoian is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Michigan. His debut novel, Waterline, is forthcoming from HarperVia in summer 2025. Previously, Aram has worked as an editor at the Chicago Review of Books, the Southeast Review, TriQuarterly, and several other literary magazines. He is the editor of the anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora published by the University of Texas Press (2023). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Literary Hub, Catapult, West Branch, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, and many other publications. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Northwestern University and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.
Assistant Managing Editors: Safa Hijazi and Sara Wong
Safa Hijazi is an aspiring poet and undergraduate studying English and creative writing at the University of Michigan. She was the first-place winner for Hopwood Nonfiction and a finalist for the Hopwood Theodore Roethke Prize in 2024. Safa was also the first-place winner of the Keith Taylor Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2023. Her Lebanese heritage inspires much of her writing and poetry.
Sara Wong is a writer from Toledo, Ohio. She is an undergraduate student studying English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, where she also serves as the managing editor for Michigan in Color at The Michigan Daily and was the recipient of Hopwood Awards for Short Fiction and Nonfiction.
Contributing Editors
Elinam Agbo was born in Ghana and grew up in Kansas. She is a winner of the 2018 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize, two Hopwood Awards for Short Fiction and Nonfiction, and the Les River Fellowship for Young Novelists. Her work has received support from Aspen Words, the Clarion Foundation, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation, among others. A graduate of the 2019 Clarion UCSD Workshop, she holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where she co-founded MQR Mixtape, an online imprint of Michigan Quarterly Review. Her writing has appeared in The Bare Life Review, American Short Fiction, Nimrod, PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2018, and elsewhere. She is currently the 2021-2023 Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose.
Diepreye is a Nigerian-American poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Winner of a 2022 and a 2023 Academy of American Poets Prize, and the second-runner-up in the 2023 American Literary Review Poetry Contest, her poems also appear or are forthcoming in Epoch, The Adroit Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, The Rising Phoenix Review, and elsewhere. Diepreye is longlisted in the 2023 National Poetry Competition.
Kabelo Sandile Motsoeneng is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied English and Human Rights Studies at Trinity College-Connecticut. An MFA in Fiction candidate, his short fiction appears in Joyland Magazine, Lolwe, Prairie Schooner, and others. Motsoeneng is currently at work on a novel.
Aaron J. Stone (they/them) is a Rising Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate in the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Virginia. Their research spans queer and trans studies, multiethnic U.S. literatures, modernist studies, and narrative theory. Stone’s current book project, The Queer Desire for Form, examines how queer subjects in the early twentieth-century U.S. employed narrative strategies to imagine what shapes their lives might take. Stone’s work is published or forthcoming in GLQ, Modernism/modernity, and The Cultural Impact of RuPaul’s Drag Race (Intellect Books, 2021).
Assistant Editors
Hank Hietala is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Michigan. His writings have appeared in Salt Hill Journal, Rain Taxi, and the Cleveland Review of Books. He grew up in Montana.
Malia Maxwell is a writer from Seattle, WA. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program and holds a BAH in English Literature from Stanford University.
Molly Mittelbach is a writer from Los Angeles. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Josh Olivier is a writer from Redlands, California. When he isn’t working on fiction, he’s busy writing twee anthems and heartbreak songs for his band, No Better. He really is trying his best.
Michael O’Ryan’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Third Coast, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. A finalist for Narrative’s 2023 Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where he won an Avery Hopwood Award in Graduate Poetry and was a finalist for the Theodore Roethke Prize. He lives in Ann Arbor, where he is a 2024-25 Zell Postgraduate Fellow in Creative Writing.
Caroline Porter is a writer who was born in Georgia but feels most at home in North Carolina. After receiving her BA from the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, she worked the glamorous jobs of librarian, nanny, and waitress before packing her bags for Michigan. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Sahara Sidi (she/her) is a poet and essayist. Her writing has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, the Adroit Journal, Salt Hill Journal, and Columbia College Chicago. She holds a BA in English and a certificate in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory from Wesleyan University. She is a recipient of the Wesleyan University Olin Fellowship, Sophie and Ann Reed Prize, Herbert Lee Connelly Prize, Cole Prize, and Winchester Fellowship. Currently, she is a 2nd-year Rackham Merit Fellow at the Helen Zell Writers Program.
Graduate Readers
Matt Dhillon is a poet from Appalachia and currently an MFA candidate in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. His work can be found in Rattle, storySouth, and About Place Journal.
Renée Flory is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She received her B.A. in English and Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, where she was awarded The Chaffee Writing Prize. Her work has appeared in Aesthetica, Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, and The Pinch.
Jennifer Nessel is a writer from Pennsylvania. They are currently an MFA candidate in fiction at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Will Ryan is a writer from Louisiana. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program.
Associate Readers
Anna Attie, Emily Carr, Ella Easterwood, Soyeon Han, Ben Hefter, Luke Homans, Esther Horjus, Marybeth King, Megan Kleiner, Joshua Olivier, Kelly Plante, Samuel Smith, Eric Sutton, and Maureen Waldner.
Visit our Internship page to learn more about opportunities to work with MQR.
