WOLNY
WRITING RESIDENCY
COMMUNITY
OUR STORIES
ZAKIYA
COWAN
2019
Zakiya Cowan is a senior at Lewis University studying Creative & Professional Writing and minoring in Spanish Language and Culture. She serves as Managing Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, she is devoted to creating a collection of work that encapsulates the voices of those who are silenced and left in the margins. She is most enthralled by writing that is rule-breaking, raw, and gives even the slightest insight on the innumerable experiences we endure as human beings. Some of her favorite writers include Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Safia Elhillo, Gabriel García Márquez, Bell Hooks, Joyce Carol Oates, and Toni Morrison. Aside from Jet Fuel, she works as a tutor in Lewis’ Writing Center and interns at United Way of Will County as their Creative Writing Intern. In her free time, she enjoys making to-do lists and watching Insecure.
PATRICIA
DAMOCLES
2019
Patricia Damocles is a junior at Lewis University majoring in English Language Arts with a minor in Creative Writing. She is the Assistant Managing Editor of Jet Fuel Review. She is a transfer student from Benedictine University who previously studied Writing & Publishing in the journalism field. Aside from being an editor for Jet Fuel, Patricia is a member of Sigma Tau Delta, a tutor at the university’s Writing Center, and a sales associate at LOFT Outlet. What she strives to achieve as a Jet Fuel editor is to give passionate, aspiring writers a platform to express themselves. As someone who has had the opportunity to be published in a previous issue, she is aware of how empowering it is to have her voice acknowledged in the world of literature. In her free time, she enjoys reading poetry and short stories, and also making memories with her friends, family, and cats. Some of her favorite writers include Maya Angelou, E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot, and Langston Hughes.
MIGUEL
SOTO
2019
Miguel Soto is an English alum of Lewis University who majored in English Literature and Language. He currently serves as the Jet Fuel Review Book Editor. He is also the Associate Editor for OUT/CAST: A Journal of Queer Midwestern Writing. He enjoys reading from multiple perspectives, and favors voices that are radical and unapologetic. Some of his favorite writers include Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Octavio Paz, and a host of contemporary writers. His own writings appear or are forthcoming in 30 N, EFNIKS, Rogue Agent, and The Rising Phoenix Review. He also serves as a mentor for SWOP-Chicago’s sex-workers behind bars program.
CHRISTIAN
MIETUS
2021
Christian Mietus is a senior at Lewis University who is an English Studies major and a minor in Film Studies and Russian Language and Culture. In 2019, he received the “Dr. Stephany Schlachter Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship Award” for his collaborative piece “Assimilation through Sound." Additionally, his poem "The Japanese Photography is Covered in Dust" is forthcoming from City Brink Magazine. His main priority is to develop himself as an individual and film connoisseur, which is his current purpose in life. In his free time, he appreciates and dissects cinema as well as consistently rating and reviewing it. Some of his favorite directors are Andrei Tarkovsky, John Cassavettes, Ingmar Bergman, Kenji Mitzoguchi, Bela Tar, Carl Th. Dreyer, Wim Wenders, Andrzej Wajda, and Yasujiro Ozu. He also appreciates different art forms, such as music and literature. Some of his favorite artists are Tom Waits, Can, Aphex Twin, and Quasimoto. Christian hopes to continue expanding his skills as a writer and to encourage others to do so as well. He writes about film for the JFR blog, so check out Christian’s Cinematic Syntax.
ZACHARY
KLOZIK
2021
Zachary Klozik is an English alum of Lewis University who majored in English Literature and Language and minored in Film Studies. He resides in New Lenox, Illinois and served as a Marketing & Design Editor and a Poetry Editor for Jet Fuel Review. He is a Wolny Writing Residency fellow and he coordinates and hosts an Open Mic Night series in Lockport, IL. He has been published in Windows Fine Arts Magazine.
MICHAEL
COTTER
2021
Michael Cotter is an alum of Lewis University who majored in English Literature and Language and minored in Film Studies. He served as president of Sigma Tau Delta and worked as a Poetry Editor and a Marketing & Design Editor for Jet Fuel Review. He presently works in downtown Chicago, IL as a visual merchandiser on Michigan Avenue. His work has been published in Windows Fine Arts Magazine as well as in Illinois’s Emerging Writers fiction anthology and hopes to have a published collection of his own some day.
DOMINIQUE
DUSEK
2022
Dominique Dusek’s work has appeared in Jet Fuel Review and Windows Fine Arts Magazine. Her chapbook Self Portrait with Playroom and Diazepam was featured in the dancing girl press chapbook series. In 2021, she presented at the Poetry Foundation for their Open Door Reading Series. After earning her Bachelor’s in Creative and Professional Writing at Lewis University, Dominique returned to school to complete her graduate degree in Secondary Education. She applies her passion for teaching writing as a middle school English Language Arts teacher.
KASIA
WOLNY
Kasia Wolny recently graduated from Lewis University with a B.A. in English, Literature and Language Concentration, and a creative writing minor. Kasia loves to read literature from around the world and across genres; some of her favorites are Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Wojciech Kuczok, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Diana Gabaldon. In her writing, she likes to focus on short story and essay composition, and on Polish-English translation. Kasia is a mom of two teenagers who, being bilingual, regularly poke fun at her for mispronouncing English words. In her free time, she likes to hike, cook, tend to her garden, visit art museums, and drink tea with friends. Kasia is the recipient of a 2019 Abraham Lincoln Civic Engagement Award, thus becoming a Student Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois. She's currently getting her graduate degree in English at UIC-Chicago and is the founder of the Wolny Writing Residency.
SIMONE
MUENCH
Simone Muench is the author of six full-length books including Lampblack & Ash (Winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), Wolf Centos (Sarabande, 2014), and Suture, a collaborative book of sonnets written with Dean Rader, (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Her chapbook Trace received the Black River Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Some of her honors include a 2013 NEA fellowship, two Illinois Arts Council fellowships, the Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry, and residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, and Vermont Studio Center, where she also served as a Visiting Writer in 2016. In 2014, she was awarded the Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award, which recognizes artists for innovation, achievements and community contributions. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois and is Professor of English at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. Currently, she serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and as the founder and host of the HB Sunday Reading Series.​
JACKIE
WHITE
Jackie K. White is Professor of English at Lewis University where she serves as a faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review and regularly teaches Introduction to Poetry and courses in Early U.S., Latinx, Latin American, Native American, and Spanish Literatures. She has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she specialized in Creative Writing (Poetry) with concentrations in Hemispheric-American Studies and Women’s Studies. A former editor of the literary journal RHINO, she has published numerous poems and translations in such journals as Tupelo Quarterly, Superstition Review, Third Coast, Posit, and Cincinnati Review. Her work is forthcoming in Pleiades and The Journal. Her first chapbook, Bestiary Charming, won the 2007 Anabiosis Award; her second chapbook, Petal-Tearing & Variations, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008, and a third, Come Clearing, by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. Dr. White is also the co-translator of Cesar Miguel Rondon’s History of Salsa and is currently working on a translation of Sherezada Vicioso’s Algo que decir: Essays on Feminist Caribbean Literature.