Meet the Staff

Jordyn Spangler - Managing Editor, Art & Design Editor: Jo Spangler is a senior at Lewis University, majoring in English Literature and Language with a minor in Creative Writing. They are a writing tutor in the Lewis Writing Center and a Youth Enrichment Aide for the YMCA. In their free time, Jo enjoys reading, writing, listening to music, and watching movies. Two of these things, reading and watching movies, Jo combines for her film adaption blog, Spangler's From Sentence to Screen. They have been to 10 countries outside the United States, including England, Italy, Turkey, and Austria. One of Jo's favorite book series is The All Souls Trilogy, by Deborah Harkness, because of how she mixes the supernatural with history and the focus on character development. In the future, Jo hopes to go into the publishing industry to help find new and exciting books for people to read. 
Cassidy Fontaine-Warunek - Asst Managing Editor, Layout Editor, Prose Editor, Asst Poetry Editor, Social Media Editor, Webmaster, and Copy Editor: Cassidy Fontaine-Warunek is a junior at Lewis University, majoring in English with a concentration in Writing, as well as minoring in Computer Science. She is also a writing tutor at the university’s Writing Center, and an employee at her local park district. Outside of Lewis, Cassidy participates in writing groups with the Community Writing Project. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, working out, reading, and writing. Some of her favorite authors are: Gillian Flynn, Terry Tempest Williams, and Michelle Alexander. Her work has appeared in Windows Magazine.
Patricia Damocles - Editor at Large, Consultant: Patricia Damocles graduated from Lewis University majoring in English Language & Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. She is a former editor for Jet Fuel Review and a 2019 Wolny Writing Residency fellow. As the former managing editor for Jet Fuel, she tried to give passionate, aspiring writers a platform to express themselves--especially for the voices of marginalized communities. Some of her favorite writers include Barbara Jane Reyes, Maya Angelou, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Langston Hughes. In her free time, she enjoys reading poetry and short stories, and also making memories with her friends, family, and cats. Currently, she is a reader for Memorious.
Christian Mietus - Consultant:​ Christian is a senior at Lewis University who is an English 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."  And, in 2020, he received a Wolny Writing Residency fellowship. 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.
Brittany Crosse - Prose Editor, Copy Editor, & Blog Editor: Brittany Crosse is a senior at Lewis University who has previously attended Moraine Valley Community College. She is majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing, and hopes to one day make a career out of writing short stories, which has been a goal of hers ever since she was little. In addition to writing, she also plans to teach fiction writing at the university level. Her interests outside of writing include TV shows, anime, music, video games, and books, her favorite authors being Neal Shusterman, Stephen King, and Haruki Murakami. Brittany spends most of her time with her dog Cordelia, a.k.a. “Cordy.”
Emilio Franchini - Asst Poetry & Prose Editor, Copy Editor: Emilio Franchini is a senior at Lewis University. He holds a particular interest in both writing and drawing, frequently crossing over the two disciplines as his preferred methods and techniques in storytelling. Additionally, he enjoys exploring music, movies, and other mediums of entertainment in search of inspiration for his written works. Some of Emilio's favorite pieces of writing include Oldboy (2003), Better Call Saul, Dark Souls, Animal Farm, and The Crucible.
Julie Nettles - Poetry & Prose Editor: Julie Nettles is a Senior at Lewis University, majoring in Secondary Education and English Studies. She is currently completing her student teaching at Joliet Catholic Academy, in Joliet, Illinois and hopes to start her career using the tools obtained during her time at Lewis in the Spring of 2022. Julie is also a recipient of the Give Back Foundation Scholarship and hopes to live up to the Give Back promise by cultivating analytical thought within her students. She looks forward to reading your submissions and watching emerging writers refine their craft.
Caeley O'Connor - Prose Editor: Caeley O'Connor is a senior at Lewis University, majoring in Journalism with a minor in Creative Writing. She is also a copy editor for the school's newspaper. In her free time, she enjoys writing, solving logic and cryptogram puzzle books, and listening to instrumental music. She is currently in the process of writing a fiction book, which she plans to publish in the future. Upon completing college, she is planning to go into the book publishing industry to help aspiring writers achieve their goals of publishing a book of their own.
Brandon Peck - Asst Blog Editor, Prose Editor, and Layout Editor: Brandon Peck is a Senior at Lewis University. He holds a great interest in painting miniatures and writing stories in his spare time. In addition, he enjoys many different kinds of media, ranging from movies to anime to video games, always keeping up to date with the latest trends of the time. Some of Brandon’s favorite pieces of writing include Devastation of Baal, Baneblade, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and Fallout: New Vegas.
​​Mary Egan - Founder: Mary founded the Jet Fuel Review during her senior year at Lewis University. Since graduating, she has ventured into the publishing world. Mary currently works at Goodheart-Willcox Publisher, where she is an Associate Editor in the Health and Health Sciences department. On a typical day, Mary spends at least six hours fiddling with and correcting other people's words, and that's the way she likes it. She still helps to maintain and edit the Jet Fuel Review's blog.  This is Mary's sixth year with the Jet Fuel Review and she is proud of the team managing the journal now. When she's not at work, Mary enjoys whittling down the numbers of unread books on her shelves, participating in National Novel Writing Month, watching Gilmore Girls over and over, and enjoying the time-suck that is the internet.

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​Faculty Advisor
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Carrie McGath - Faculty Editor & Advisor: Carrie McGath is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Small Murders, as well as several handmade, limited-edition poetry chapbooks including Dollface, So Sorry to See You Go, Ward Eighty-One, Ohio Lonely, and The Chase. She is currently at work on her second full-length poetry collection, The Luck of Anhedonia. Her poems have appeared in The Tahoma Literary Review, The Chariton Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and others and she has worked as an art critic in the city of Chicago since 2009. Her art criticism has appeared in Brut Force, Chicagoist, Newcity, and Third Coast Review and she is the Art Editor for Lovers Eye Press. Carrie is listed on VIDA’ s ‘anti-list’ of Under-Acknowledged Women Writers where author, Monica Drake writes: “…McGath reimagines a world that opens to grand possibility while simultaneously remaining painfully claustrophobic, and therefore married to a new kind of truth.”

Carrie is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she teaches
composition and creative writing. Before working toward her doctorate, Carrie received
her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (poetry) from Western Michigan University
before moving to Chicago to earn a Masters in New Arts Journalism and Art History
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Carrie lives in the Logan Square
neighborhood of Chicago with her sassy tuxedo cat, Sophie.
Simone Muench - Chief Faculty Editor & Advisor: 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, as the poetry editor for JackLeg Press, and as the founder and host of the HB Sunday Reading Series.​ A vegetarian and life-long horror film fan, you can find her at www.simonemuench.com

Consultants
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Jackie K. White - Reader & Consultant: Jackie K. White is an Associate Professor at Lewis where she regularly teaches Introduction to Poetry; Early U.S. Literature; Latino, Latin American, Native American Literature; and Teaching Young Adult Lit. 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 for nine years, Dr. White also has published numerous poems and translations in such journals as ACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, and online at seven bridges, shadowbox, and prosepoem. com. Her first chapbook, Bestiary Charming won the 2007 Anabiosis Award and her second chapbook, Petal-Tearing & Variations, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. A third chapbook of poems, Come Clearing, was published by Dancing Girl Press in March, 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.
Miguel Soto - Reader & Consultant: Miguel graduated with a Bachelor’s of Arts in English Literature and Language from Lewis University. He is a Wolny Writing Residency fellow. He is also the Founder of Not Another Lit Mag and Poetry Reader for Split Lip Magazine. His writings can be found in [PANK} Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, 30 N, The Ekphrastic Review, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. Check out his book reviews published under Jet Fuel Review for a sense of what he loves to read. You can find him at www.miguelasoto.com 
Kasia Wolny - Consultant: Kasia has 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.
Zakiya Cowan - Consultant: Zakiya Cowan recently graduated from Lewis University with her B.A. in English & Spanish Language and Culture. She is a former editor for Jet Fuel Review, a 2019 Wolny Writing Residency fellow, and a 2020 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship recipient. Her work is published or forthcoming in Hobart, Split Lip Magazine, Windows Fine Arts Magazine, Spoon River Poetry Review, and You Flower/You Feast: A Harry Styles Anthology. Some of her favorite writers include Toni Morrison, Roxane Gay, Eve Ewing, and Safia Elhillo. In her free time, she enjoys listening to crime podcasts, writing, and discovering new bookstores and restaurants to visit in her hometown of Chicago. She is a reader for Memorious, an intern for Sundress Publications, and the interview editor for the new BIWOC run Honey Lit.

​​In Memoriam: JFR Editor Steven T. Seum (July 19, 1978 - December 29, 2017)
Visit here for the Tribute Page 
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Picture
​Graduate 
     Dedicated to Steven Seum

If i could make time stop
I'd freeze the moment before you graduated.

Crystal figures in a curio-cabinet metronome 
close to the edge, so i fear they may topple.
I can't catch them, because i run in slow
motion and these soles have no friction.

I slow down time.
I can't stop the confetti
before it ashes in your eye.
But i can watch it, in slower

            and slower



                         and slower motion. 
 
 
 by Rae Powell

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​In Memoriam: JFR Editor Lucas Boelter (Sept 23, 1990-Sept 24, 2015)
Visit here for the Tribute Page

back of my van

the back of my van and the smoke
is ghosts of white, ephemeral flowers
that puff and sink and we're all here
singing Sunday Morning Coming Down
and Lenny with the nose that holds
a white earring shaped into the word
BANG!, exclamation mark and all,
he says he’s joining the navy
after the trip only if they sing
In The Navy when on the boat
and his pops used to beat the shit
out of him and his sister and collie
too and he once told me
I could look into my daddy's
eyes and see two ghosts fightin'
each other and the ghost wit'
the red back always winnin'
but it’s all right now because he’s
with Margaret now and with his friends
and we're in the back of our van
smoking and singing Sunday Morning
Coming Down
 
 
 by Lucas Boelter

Previous Editors

Bianca Apato, Ryan Arciero, Lauren Barnes, Liz Baudler, Jordan Benes, Brittany Bishop, Katelyn Bittke, Joseph Block, Lucas Boelter, Madeline Brzeczek, Gianna Capperino, Jillian Carlberg, Melissa Carrington, Mary Carroll, Ashley Castillo, Kayla Chambers, Angela Ciarlette, Caitlin Connelly, Melissa Cortez, Michael Cotter, Zakiya Cowan, Amber Curl, Sean Darke, Patricia Damocles, Dominique Dusek, Mike Egan, Henrietta Eghan, Payton Emond, Katie Esposito, Daniel Fiorio, Tim Fitzpatrick, Sarah Ford, Sam Gennett, Mandy Gieseler, Miguel Gonzalez, Audrey Heiberger, Andrea Holm, Kammeran Hughes, Mark Jacobs Sanders, Jake Johnson, Jess Jordan, Jeff Jurinek, Jakob Kagay, Stephanie Karas, Zachary Klozik, Joshua Kostecka, Kari Krajniak, Monika Kois, Kyle Kotas, Lydia Kozlowski, Michael Lane, Emily Lif, Stephanie Lipinski, Kelly Lyons, Mike Malan, Theresa Marten, Nicole Martinez Harn, Salvador Martinez, Grant Mazan, Ashley McCann, Deirdre McCormick, Symone McCoy, China McDonald, Tina McKee, Zachary Meredith, Samantha Moffett, Gabby Muir, Dina Nashed, Jacqueline Nelson, Doug Overbeck, Stephen Papesh, Sabrina Parr, Chris J. Patiño, Kyle Paup, Madelyn Pedersen, Chris Pelech, Tonya Peterson, Lauren Pirc, Carrera ‘Rae’ Powell, Caitlyn Quinlan, Olivia Radakovich, Stephanie Raga, Nicole Reidy, Haley Renison, , Andrea Yvette Rodriguez, Donatas Ruzys, Samantha Rydberg, Bree Scott, Christine Sellin, Steven Seum, Lucas Sifuentes, Noah Slowik, Miguel Soto, Michelle Staje, Ashley Stajura, Rachel Steele, Linda K. Strahl, Reno Stramaglia, Quinn Stratton, Eryn Stochelski, Roslyn Summerville, Keanu Taylor, Armon Thurmond, Kasia Wolny, Victoria Vega, Ashley Zizich
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