Lingering Inland Book Launch Party

Marc Blanc

Marc Blanc is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Xavier University. His writing and research focus on working-class literary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially those active in the American Midwest. A lifelong resident of the Rust Belt, the culture and politics of postindustrial cities directly inspire his work. His essays and articles have appeared in Jacobin, History News Network, Belt, College Literature, and The New Territory.

Devin is the author of The Veiled Prophet, publishing with Haymarket Books in June 2026. His writing is in The Iowa Review, The Nation, Slate, LA Review of Books, Boulevard, and elsewhere. Represented by Erik Hane, Headwater Literary.

Leslie VonHolten writes about land and culture in the prairie and Great Plains regions. She is co-editor of the anthology Kansas Matters: 21st-Century Writers on the Sunflower State with Thomas Fox Averill (University Press of Kansas). Her essays have appeared in The New Territory, Literary Landscapes, The Dark Mountain Project, and on High Plains Public Radio. She lives in Lawrence with her husband Tim and their misbehaving dogs and garden.

Michaella Thornton’s writing often explores levity, lust, and letting go. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fractured Lit, HAD, Moon City Review, New South, The New Territory Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Reckon Review, Southeast Review, and trampset, among other fine publications. In recent years, her writing has also been nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and Best Microfiction. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona and lives in suburban St. Louis, Missouri with her daughter. She loves exploring what it means to be a writer born and raised in the lower Midwest. She is exceptionally grateful for the ongoing artist support of the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. You can read more of Kella’s work at https://www.michaellathornton.com/ or find her on Bluesky @kellathornton.

Karen Dillon has been teaching American literature and first-year writing at Blackburn College since 2011. During that time, she has published the book The Spectacle of Twins in American Literature and Popular Culture and co-edited and co-authored with her colleague Naomi Crummey the book The Wire in the College Classroom: Pedagogical Approaches in the Humanities and an essay for The New Territory Magazine. Currently, Karen serves as director of the college’s writing center. 

Naomi Crummey earned her PhD in Non-Fiction Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her essays have appeared in Prairie Fire, Kudzu House, and Grain. She has enjoyed collaborating with her colleague, Karen Dillon, on an essay published in The New Territory Magazine and a co-edited book, The Wire in the College Classroom: Pedagogical Approaches in the Humanities. She serves as Chair of English & Communications at Blackburn College. 

Evan Allen Wood is a writer living in Columbia and the publisher of Missouri Life magazine. He writes essays, book reviews, and short fiction about people planting trees and losing their minds.

Jason Stacy is a Distinguished Research Professor of History and Director of the Social Science Education Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), specializing in U.S. print culture and historical pedagogy. His research includes the journalism of Walt Whitman leading up to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, explored in his book Walt Whitman’s Multitudes (2008), and a cultural analysis of Edgar Lee Masters’s work in Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town (2021). Stacy also serves as a Contributing Editor for The Walt Whitman Archive. Having earned his Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago and previously taught public school history for ten years, he has also co-authored several U.S. history textbooks, including Fabric of a Nation (2020, 2024) and Documenting United States History (2015), designed for high school and Advanced Placement courses.

Marc Seals  is a professor of English at the Baraboo campus of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where he teaches courses in American literature, composition, and film. He has published articles and book chapters on authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gwendolyn Brooks, Dashiell Hammett, and Zona Gale. A native of the Deep South, he has grown to love the Midwest.