This month’s series A features Ricardo Cortez Cruz and Chuck Stebelton.

Ricardo Cortez Cruz teaches English at Illinois State University and is the author of the novels Straight Outta Compton and Five Days of Bleeding, compositions short and funky and with grooves as their only guide. He recently stitched together a third def(t) body of (s)language, Premature Autopsies=: Tales of Darkest America, remixing and reconstituting himself as if his very lively ‘hood depended upon it.

Chuck Stebelton works as Literary Program Manager at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. He is the author of Circulation Flowers (Tougher Disguises, 2005) and Precious, an Answer Tag chapbook. Newer work appears in recent issues of Antennae, Jubilat, Verse, LVNG, Magazine Cypress, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Chain 12: Facts. He recently collaborated with Cindy Loehr on Revival, “a cathedral of flame with a pre-recorded oration inside.”