Tamara Burross Grisanti
Founder / Editor-in-Chief
Tamara Burross Grisanti is a writer, editor, poet, and publisher. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Coffin Bell Journal. Prior to founding Coffin Bell in 2017, she served as Senior Editor of ELJ – Elm Leaves Journal, edited by Kim Chinquee, and Social Media Editor for New World Writing, edited by Frederick Barthelme. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary journals online and in print, including New Mexico Review, Pussy Magic Heals, formercactus, Corvus Review, The Literary Hatchet, New World Writing, and elsewhere. She has independently published one novel under a pen name, and is currently an MFA candidate in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing at Emerson College.
Ray Ball
Senior Editor
Ray Ball grew up in a house full of snakes. She has a PhD in European History and an MFA in Poetry. She currently lives on Dena’ina lands, where she is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Ray is the author of Trinities (Louisiana Literature, 2023) and Lararium (Variant Lit, 2020). Her poetry and fiction have recently been published in Free State Review, Stone Circle Review, and X-R-A-Y. Ray has received multiple nominations for Pushcart and been a Best of the Net finalist. When she’s not in the classroom, Ray can be found researching in the archives, running on Alaska’s trails, or drinking bitter beverages.
Kyle Shrader
Associate Editor / Nonfiction Editor
Kyle James Shrader is a writer of poetry and nonfiction, an educator, and a professional reader who, like so many WNYers, has boomeranged back to Buffalo after years away. He has taught writing at colleges and universities in Florida, Texas, and New York. He has edited for Florida Review, The Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review, and now Coffin Bell. His own work has appeared in Crack the Spine, The Chaffey Review, The Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review, Carcinogenic Poetry, and others. When not drinking coffee (or wine) and grading papers, he can be found hiking in the woods with his young daughter and his old dog.
Jessica Drake-Thomas
Poetry Editor
Jessica Drake-Thomas is a poet, novelist, and PhD student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She’s the author of two poetry collections, Burials (CLASH Books 2020) and Bad Omens (Querencia Press 2023), and one novel, Hollow Girls (Cemetery Dance 2024). She holds degrees from Tulane University, Emerson College, and the University of Arizona. Her work has been featured in Ploughshares, Eye to the Telescope, and The Dark Side of Purity, amongst many others. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net, the Rhysling Award, and the Elgin Award. She lives in Milwaukee with Nick and their dogs, Poppy and Potato.
Zuri McWhorter
Fiction Editor
Zuri McWhorter is a writer from Detroit, MI. She has self-published two poetry chapbooks and is the one-woman staff behind Juste Milieu Zine. Studies in literature have taken her to Michigan State University, NUI Galway, Trinity College, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Her fiction writings have been been featured a myriad of publications, including Abandon Journal, Coffin Bell Journal and the Blue Nib. Zuri wrote and directed the short horror film “Pretty Lady“, released in 2016. She lives in really cool apartment in Detroit with a ton of plants and posters.
Brad Baumgartner
Fiction Editor
Brad Baumgartner is a writer and theorist. He is the author of several works, including Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text (Lehigh UP, 2021), Dead Man’s Switch (Orbis Tertius, 2022), Stylinaut (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), The –Tempered Mid·riff: A Play in Four Parts (Schism-Neuronics, 2020), Celeste: Our Lady of Flowering Marvel (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020), and Quantum Mechantics: Memoirs of a Quark (The Operating System, 2019). In his work, Brad is interested in transdisciplinary approaches to writing, exploring the intersections of horror, mysticism, speculative aesthetics, experimental poetics, and theory fiction. He teaches in the English Department at Penn State University.
A. A. de Levine
Short Story Editor
A.A. de Levine’s short fiction and essays have appeared in New Gothic Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, NoSleep, Good Night Sweet Prince, Movie Diary, Film Da Da and elsewhere. She has developed several social media-based immersive stories and has ghost-written for a robot pop star, a computer boy, and a killer doll, as one does.