George Kovach (1947-2020), author of the poetry collection The Light Outside, served as a combat infantryman in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for Valor. He returned home, married, completed his undergraduate degree, raised three children, and had a twenty-year career in the field of commercial real estate. While working to overcome debilitating symptoms of PTSD, he returned to his love of literature and earned his MA and then MFA in Creative Writing at UMass Boston. Next he launched CONSEQUENCE Magazine, an award-winning literary journal addressing the culture and consequences of war through poetry, prose and visual art. George turned his disabling experience of war into an act of literary creation, and dedicated himself to editing and publishing the work of international artists and writers who understood and expressed war’s meaning and impact the world over. He will be remembered for the courage displayed in everything he took on, his skill as an encouraging and rigorous editor, his discriminating good taste, his generosity, his remarkable kindness, and the grace with which he blessed the world.
Matthew Krajniak earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston as a C. Glenn Cambor fellow. He coedited Wendy Battin: On the Life & Work of an American Master (Unsung Master Series, 2020), and his writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Poetry Foundation, Willows Wept Review, The Avalon Literary Review, The Wax Paper, and elsewhere. His father, uncle, maternal grandmother, and maternal grandfather are all Veterans of foreign wars.
Elizabeth Lukács Chesla writes, edits, and translates from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and teaches at Gwynedd Mercy University. Her award-winning novella, You Cannot Forbid the Flower (2023), is based on her father’s experience in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. She was a finalist in the 2017 Quarter After Eight Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest and has work forthcoming in Flare: An Anthology of Chronic Illness Told in Flash Narratives. Her translations of Panni Puskás and Réka Ágnes Tóth have appeared in Hungarian Literature Online.
Milica Mijatović is a Serb poet, translator, and author of War Food (Southword Editions), winner of the 2022 Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Born in Brčko, Bosnia and Hercegovina, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and was a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart and appears in Rattle, Salamander, Plume, The Louisville Review, Collateral, Santa Clara Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.
Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian writer and literary translator working between Arabic and English. He holds an MFA in Literary Translation from Boston University and both a BA and MA in Comparative Literature from Fayoum University, Egypt. Fawzy’s translations have been featured in various literary outlets. His accolades include a 2024-25 Global Africa Translation Fellowship, a 2024 PEN Presents Award, and the 2024 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship from ALTA.
Originally from Montreal, Quebec, Mary Behrens moved to the US in the 1980s where she received her BA from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from Vermont College in 1994. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in the US, with her recent work “RUN,” a series reflecting the global issue of flight from war torn countries, slated to be exhibited in Shanghai at Duke University Kunshun in spring 2026. She has been an associate editor at Art New England and has lectured at many colleges, including Rhode Island School of Design, University of Massachusetts, Boston University, and Montserrat College of Art.
Peter Brown’s collection of short stories, A Bright Soothing Noise (UNT Press, 2010), won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize. With co-translators, he has published three books of poetry in translation, including a French translation of the collected poems of David Ferry. Recent work has appeared in The North Dakota Quarterly and The Harvard Review. He was a founding editor of Salamander.
Martha Collins, Fred Marchant, Askold Melnyczuk, Tom Sleigh, Hester Kaplan, Jane Unrue, Parisa Saranj, JJ Amaworo Wilson, Grace Talusan, and Connie T. Braun
