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IHLR Masthead

The editors of Iron Horse.

IHLR Masthead

The editors of Iron Horse.

IHLR Masthead

The editors of Iron Horse.

IHLR Masterhead

The editors of Iron Horse.

masthead

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leslie jill patterson editor e

Leslie Jill Patterson founded IHLR in 1999. Her prose has appeared in Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, River Teeth, The Rumpus, Hunger Mountain, Hotel Amerika, under the gum tree, and A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays. Her awards include a Texas Commission on the Arts fellowship; two Kimmel-Harding Nelson residencies; an Embrey Human Rights Fellowship; the Everett Southwest Literary Award (judged by Lee K. Abbott); a Soros Justice Fellowship, funded by the Open Society Foundations; the Prime Number Magazine Prize for Fiction (judged by David Jauss); the Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Writing; and two Pushcart Prizes (2018 and 2024). Since 2009, she has also worked as the case storyteller for public defenders representing indigent men and women charged with capital murder and facing the death penalty in Texas.

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jo anna gaona assistant editor

Jo Anna Gaona has taught a variety of classes in English rhetoric, composition, literature, and creative writing, at public schools and at various universities. She currently teaches at Texas Tech, where she is a member of the Teaching Academy. After receiving her MFA from Seattle Pacific University, she served as Creative Nonfiction Editor for Relief: A Christian Literary Expression. She previously served as Managing Editor for IHLR while working on her master's degree at Texas Tech.

marcus burke fiction editor

Marcus Burke’s debut novel, Team Seven, was published in 2014 by Doubleday Books. Team Seven received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, was long-listed for the 2015 PEN Open Book Award, and was one of the “10 Titles to Pick Up Now,” in O, The Oprah Magazine. Burke was featured in The NY Times as part of a cohort of thirty two “Black Male Authors of our Time." He is currently at work on his next novel.

geffrey davis poetry editor

Geffrey Davis is the author of Night Angler (BOA), recent winner of the 2018 James Laughlin Award. His first collection, Revising the Storm (BOA, 2014), won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and was a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. Davis’s honors include the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the NEA, and The Whiting Foundation. He has recent work published in The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, The New York Times Magazine, PBS NewsHour, and Ploughshares. Davis is currently a faculty member in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, and in the summer of 2018, he joined the low-res MFA faculty at The Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

elena passarello nonfiction editor

Elena Passarello is an actor, a writer, and the recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been published in Oxford American, Slate, Creative Nonfiction, and The Iowa Review, among other publications, as well as in the 2015 anthologies Cat is Art Spelled Wrong and After Montaigne. Her first essay collection, Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande), won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards and was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award. Sarabande will publish her second collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses, in February 2017. Passarello is a faculty member in the MFA program at Oregon State University.

Photo Credit: Wendy Madar

jenn jussel senior managing editor

Jenn Jussel is a PhD student at Texas Tech University studying English with a concentration in creative writing. In addition to serving as Senior Managing Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review, she teaches literature and creative writing at TTU. She received her MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, where she also taught undergraduate English composition and creative writing. Her first book, Mellitus: Essays on Up/Rooting, won the 2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction Prize. Her creative work has been supported by the McCormack Writing Center and Vermont Studio Center and has been published most recently in Spectrum, Radar, Booth, Santa Clara Review, Cleaver, The Blood Orange Review, and others.

damilola oyedeji managing editor

Damilola Oyedeji is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and literary critic. Her work explores inter-sectional discourses of Black bodies experiences. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Blue Scapes, with Thirty West Publishing House, PA. Her work has appeared in Hellbender, LLIDS Journal, Lolwe, Orange Blossom Review, The Shallow Tales Review, Brittle Paper, The Nigeria Review, Talon Review, Belfast Review, Poetry Journal, the Sprinng Writing Fellowship 2023 Anthology, and elsewhere. A past Sprinng fellow, Damilola mentors emerging writers in creative nonfiction through the Sprinng Writing Fellowship. She is a PhD student in Creative Writing at Texas Tech University and holds a MA in English from Missouri State University.

alex stanley managing editor

Alex Stanley earned a BA in English from Boston College before finding work as a sports journalist in small-town New Mexico. He proceeded to earn his MFA in Creative Writing from UC Irvine, where he also taught as a lecturer. He is now working toward his PhD in English at Texas Tech. His poetry can be found in a variety of journals like the PN Review, the Notre Dame Review, and Mantis.

associate editors: Aaron Babcock, Abby Macenka, Adrian Pachuca, Aled Dillabough, Alexis Rae Clifton, Allie Stokes, Alli Riechman-Bennett, Amber Terranova, Anshuman Yadav, Ari Kelly, Ashton Russell, Axel Rosas, Aza Pace, Camden Michael Jones, Cari Castillo De La O, Charlotte Fiehn, David Cofer, Dyana Herron, Elias Johnson, Fathima Ameera, Fuad Thayyil, Haley Hodges, Isabelle Hutchinson, Itohan Ekle, Jeff Thomas, Jordan Ranft, JDG, KJ Tenhouse, Kristi Cook, Kristyn Garza, Lauren Peacock, Lee Patrick Patterson, Mahika Rajwade, Maia Elgin Wegmann, Mandira Pattnaik, Maria Fischer, Max Steiner, Melissa Boston, Michelle Li, Naveed Alam, Nickcolus Blakemore, Nicole Lyssy, Noah G. Thomas, Okoli Stephen Nonso, Olivia Jane Jacobson, Priscilla Awonusi, Quamrul Hassan, Rebecca Dos Santos Freire, Ruby Carson, Shane Moran, Sierra Voiles, Thomas Hamil, Tom Heath, Veronica Schorr, and William Matthew McCarter.