Masthead

Special Notice: We have become aware of individuals impersonating our staff and offering opportunities on our behalf. Please be advised that Another Chicago Magazine will never ask for payment or direct you to a third-party service that requires payment. If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from our staff, please do not respond or send money.

✶✶✶✶

Executive Editor

Karen Paley is the Executive Editor of Another Chicago Magazine and author of I-Writing: The Politics and Practice of Teaching First-Person Writing (Southern Illinois University Press). Other work has appeared in Allium and The RavensPerch. Her current project is a memoir, Living on the Left, which traces her political activism from the Vietnam anti-war movement era to her recent peace-building work with joint Palestinian-Israeli groups opposing the occupation of Gaza.

Managing Editor

Lillian Beach Borovac holds a BA in English from The College of Wooster and an MA in writing and publishing from DePaul University. Lillian has worked with multiple literary magazines, including The Dodge and The Upper New Review, where her work has also been published. Her writing often blends themes of loss, memory, and the environment with psychological and body horror.

Assistant Managing Editor | Book Reviews

Laura Hawbaker is a Chicago-based editor whose journalism and criticism have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, PopMatters, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Linguistics. She was the winner of the Tusculum Review Fiction Prize, and her novel, The Afters, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing.

✶✶✶✶


Poetry

Will Russo is our poetry editor and the author of two poetry chapbooks: Dreamsoak (Querencia Press, 2023) and Glass Manifesto, winner of the 2023 Robert Campbell Chapbook Award from Anhinga Press. Born and raised in New York City, he is now based in Chicago, where he received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Poetry readers

Brianna Douglass is a poet, fiction writer, and multidisciplinary visual artist living in Chicago. She holds an MFA in Writing from SAIC and is currently writing the second draft of a gothic fantasy novel that she hopes will become her debut. With thanks in advance, Brianna asks that you please cross your fingers for her when she begins querying.

Steven Hollander is a poet based in Chicago. His work has been published by The Under Review, OPOSSUM, Punt Volat, The Bangalore Review, North Dakotah Quarterly, and Long Poem Magazine.

Bela Koschalk is a writer based in Chicago, Illinois. Their poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society of America. They have writing featured in Narrative Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Denver Quarterly, CutBank, and elsewhere.

juj e. lepe is a writer, editor, and educator from Northern California. Their debut poetry chapbook, Your Name Means Solitude, was selected for the 2026 Robert Phillis Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming with Texas Review Press. juj received an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. They live in Chicago.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. She has had work published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, One Art, The Shore, and others. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies (Unsolicited Press), as well as three chapbooks. She has an MFA from Pacific University.

Izzy Toy Rettke is a cilantro-averse Chinese-American butch from Chicago who writes about waterbodies, companionship, and great white sharks. Izzy is a two-time recipient of the Nevin Prize and the 2025 recipient of the Charlotte Paul Reese Memorial Prize. Izzy’s work has been supported by Tin House and Sundress Academy for the Arts, and published or forthcoming with The Academy of American Poets, Foglifter, and Strange Horizons. When not writing, Izzy can be found printmaking, folding zines, and making soup.

Fiction

Cameron Carter is our fiction editor and a fiction writer and educator from Atlanta, Georgia. He holds an MA from Ball State University and an MFA from Georgia State University and is currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Missouri. He received the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright College Award and was a finalist for the Jesmyn Ward Prize for Fiction. He has received support from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Seventh Wave, Kimbilio, and Tin House. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in storySouth, Cutleaf, and elsewhere.

Fiction readers

Alexandra Apuzzo is a fiction writer living in Jersey City. She holds an MFA from Rutgers-Newark and teaches writing at colleges across New Jersey. In between teaching and playing with her dog, she is writing her first novel—or, rather, she is thinking about writing her first novel. Her prose has appeared in Juxtaprose Literary Magazine, Chestnut Review, Grist Journal, and elsewhere. In 2026, she received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Andy Arnold is a fiction writer. After receiving his MFA from Oklahoma State (go Pokes!), he moved around Texas before settling in Austin, where he’s still working on that damn story collection. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Superstition Review, and The Collapsar. When not at his desk writing fiction, he’s at his desk writing advertising copy.

Sophia Bano is a writer and editor from Pakistan.

Caleb Berg is a writer and educator from Richmond, CA, currently living in Chicago. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Houston, where he was an Inprint Isabel M. Elkins Fellow. You can find his work in Gulf Coast, 3:AM, and Emerge Literary Journal.

Kat de Jesus Chua is a data scientist and Pushcart Prize-nominated short story writer living in Chicago. She is an incoming MFA student in writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Originally from Texas, Grace Tsichlis now resides in Chicago, where she’s a creative writing and publishing MFA student at DePaul University. Her stories have appeared in They Call Us and Sad Goose Cooperative. She’s the editor of The Orange Couch, the DePaul University Writing Center’s online literary journal.

Nonfiction

Lauren Booker is our nonfiction editor and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Goucher College and a BA in journalism from Georgia State University. She is a digital editor at The Boston Globe, where she works on special projects and with two verticals: Money, Power, Inequality: Examining the Racial Wealth Gap and The Great Divide: Race, class, and opportunity in our schools. Prior to joining the Globe, Lauren was based in Atlanta, with bylines in CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR affiliate. Lauren was a finalist for an Online Journalism Award and won the Atlanta Press Club’s Lifestyle Journalism Award of Excellence.

Dan Zamarelli is the assistant nonfiction editor and digital editor. He previously served as ACM’s social media intern and editor of The Loop. He is a freelance copywriter and essayist based in Chicago.

Nonfiction readers

Camilia Cenek holds BA degrees in English and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA in English from Marquette University. She is now earning an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College. Her writing has appeared in Madison Magazine, The Good Life Review, The Sunlight Press, Creative Wisconsin Anthology, and other places. She has been awarded a Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring and received the Midwest Writing Center’s residency award. Her current project is a memoir about growing up in the Chicago suburbs within the web of her mother’s mental illness.

Sea Stachura is a multi-genre writer and editor based in Augusta, Georgia. Her deep, victim-centered reporting on Augusta’s 1970 Civil Rights uprising prompted the DOJ to relaunch its investigation into the deaths of six men. Shots in the Back: Exhuming the 1970 Augusta Riot also won a national Edward R. Murrow Award. Her literary work has been published in Poet Lore, Thimble Literary, Ploughshares, and other outlets. She holds an MA in journalism and an MFA in fiction and misses her hometown, Detroit.

Sangmi Yoo writes creative nonfiction and has been published in Creator Mag, Red Sheep Magazine, and Arboreal Literary Magazine.

Translations

Annie Janusch’s translations include works by Esther Dischereit, Jürgen Goldstein, Wolf Haas, Anja Kampmann, Heinrich von Kleist, and Uwe Tellkamp. She is a founding member of the Third Coast Translators Collective and a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.

Alex Niemi is a poet and award-winning literary translator from the French, Russian, and Spanish. Her translations include works by Anna Glazova, Vincent Tholomé, and Laura Vazquez. She is a 2023 NEA translation fellow and her poems and translations have been published in Harper’s, Best Literary Translations 2025, Columbia Review, The Midwest Review, Prelude, and elsewhere.

Forthcoming Book Excerpts

Deborah Adelman is the editor of forthcoming. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Cream City Review, Jewish Currents, Lilith, Memoir Magazine, Verse-Virtual, and Permafrost. She has published two books, The “Children of Perestroika”: Moscow Teenagers Talk About Their Lives and the Future and The “Children of Perestroika” Come of Age: Young People of Moscow Talk About Life in the New Russia. She lives in Oak Park, IL, and taught English and film studies at the College of DuPage.

Art and Photography

Hanna (Dodd) Ferguson is a writer and artist from the Quad Cities, IL, who lives and works in Chicago. She is a graduate of Luther College, where she studied English, linguistics, and art history. Her writing can be found in Cutleaf Journal.

Interviews

✶ We are currently seeking an interviews editor. Interested applicants may reach out to us at anotherchimagazine@gmail.com.

✶✶✶✶


Copyediting

Copyediting coordinator Larkin is a writer and comedian based in Chicago. They are currently writing their first novel while working as a substitute teacher.

Grants and Analytics Manager

Sergei Burbank is a screenwriter, playwright, performer, audiobook narrator, and producer in New York City. His works have been staged by the Scranton Shakespeare Festival, Quick Silver Theater Company, Oracle Theatre Inc., the BoCoCa Arts Festival, and the Planet Connections Festivity. His articles and short stories have appeared in Vernacular Journal, Indie Theater Now, NYTheaterNow, Parabasis, HowlRound, fwriction:review, and Baseball Prospectus. He is resident playwright with Quick Silver Theater Company and a member of Actors’ Equity Association. He holds an MFA in playwriting from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s University and a BA in drama from Kenyon College. He can be found on Substack.

Internships

✶ We are not looking for interns at this time.

Past Interns

Andy Brinkis, Tony Miller, Evan Richards, Angel Valdes, Miranda Malinowski, Maxwell Rowe-Sutton, Ryan Ziencina, Emily Johnson, Anne Duncan, Matthew Kilbane, Julia Shanker, Ben Richman, Azize Altay Harvey, Lillian Richardson, Olivia Griffin, Avani Kalra, Isabelle Wade, Olivia Shay, Nancy Gorman, Leah Schroeder, Sarah Weiner, Emma Ashley, Larissa Goadler, Katie Dallas, Elinor Hendricks, Amina Alieva, Gemma Marx, Anushka Dabhade, Sumon Bomya, Qudus Olowo, Mars Thomasson

✶✶✶✶


Staff Emeriti

S. L. Wisenberg founded Another Chicago Magazine online in 2017, after the print magazine ceased publication. She had served as the nonfiction editor of the print magazine from 1997 to 2010 and was executive editor and nonfiction editor from 2017 to 2025.

Neil Blackadder served as translations editor from 2020 to 2026.

Matt Wood served as digital editor and nonfiction editor from August 2017 through May 2018. He designed and built ACM’s current website.

Lee Webster, Barry Silesky, Sharon Solwitz, Tom Moss, Sara Skolnik (1949–2017), Simone Muench, Jacob Knabb, Caroline Eick, Matt Rowan, Betty Scott, Dan Gonzalez, Patrick Parks, Samuel Schwindt, Tara Betts, John Moss, Kurt Heintz, Nicole Von Drasek, Eliza Nichols, Vincent Francone, Natalie Haney Tilghman, Kimberly Dixon-Mays, Katana Smith, Christine Byrne, Jennifer C. Nash, Erica Jasmin Dixon, Nic Rueth, Arne Weingart, Tarnynon Onumonu, Sasha Weiss, Tamara Matthews, Erik Noonan, Ian Eric Wojcikiewicz, Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Charlie Kolodziej, Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal, Christina Gaudino, Alex Wells Shapiro, Emily Page, Franchesca Viaud, Jade Han, Rachael Vaughan Clemmons

Board of Directors

S.L. Wisenberg, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Gina DiPonio, Joanna Brown, Rachel Wiggins

✶✶✶✶

Questions, comments: anotherchimagazine@gmail.com

Whenever possible, we link book titles to Bookshop.org, an independent bookselling site. As a Bookshop.org Another Chicago Magazine earns a small percentage from qualifying purchases. Every little bit helps us, as we are all-volunteer.

ACM is a nonprofit organization; all donations are tax deductible.