A note from founding editor Keith Hood
In June of 2001, Maureen Aitken, Cathy Mellett and I, in a moment of collective insanity, came up with the idea to start a new fiction journal. Orchid: A Literary Review was born out of frustration at the limited number of venues available to short story writers. The literary community had recently witnessed the demise of great journals such as Story and American Short Fiction. We wanted to add a new voice to the handful of journals dedicated to publishing primarily fiction. We also wanted to present a friendly market for new and emerging writers.

On June 15, 2002, the first issue of Orchid: A Literary Review arrived in bookstores and mail boxes in Michigan and across the country. Since we were starting from scratch, our premier issue contained some work we had solicited from established writers: Jonis Agee, Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Stephen Dixon, Daniel Mueller, Debbie Lee Wesselmann, and Monica Wood. As avid readers of literary journals we had come across great stories by unknown writers such as Michelle Brooks, E. J. Levy, and Alison Umminger. We solicited work from these writers and from Viet Thanh Nguyen, a writer whose work I had seen in a workshop context. Still, more than half of the work published in issue one was work that had come over-the-transom and most of this was work by new or emerging writers including a first publication for Guo Liang and a first publication for Viet Thanh Nguyen (Viet had a story accepted at Manoa before submitting work to Orchid but we went to press first and get bragging rights). Issue two of Orchid included work solicited from established authors Bonnie Jo Campbell and Maura Stanton, but the remainder of that issue was outstanding fiction by writers whose names were unknown to us.

Maureen Aitken and Cathy Mellett regained their sanity while issue three was in production and relinquished their duties as executive editors. In actuality, all kidding aside, real life can just be a pain in the butt sometimes and the departure of Maureen and Cathy was made necessary by the demands of work and family. Their hard work and dedication were instrumental in shaping Orchid into a showcase for great fiction. I enjoyed working with them and wish them the best in all their future endeavors.

Amy Sumerton stepped in as executive editor during final production of issue three. She had been with Orchid as assistant editor since the second issue. Amy is a shrewd judge of talent, a great copyeditor, great content editor, and she is joy to work with (the drugs I feed her guarantee that her sanity will not return anytime soon and the ball and chain also help). Issue four of Orchid was the first product of the new editorial partnership and introduced Sarah Gerkensmeyer, James Lee, Yasmina Madden, and Pauline Palko to the reading public. The editorial board continues to grow and flourish with the production of issue five of Orchid and the addition of fiction readers, Adin Bookbinder, Matt Gelzer, and Andrew Livingston.

Author info and a few interesting side notes for all sixty-one authors we’ve published appears below. We've now achieved the goal of paying the writers we publish. If you’d like to help us sustain this achievement visit the Support Our Mission page and click the donation button.

Author Bios

Elissa Minor Rust (issue 5) has just completed a collection of short stories, The Prisoner Pear. This collection includes her Orchid story, "Iris and Megan Imagine Alternatives" and has been well reviewed in Publishers Weekly and the New York Times Book Review. She is the recipient of the Peregrine Prize, The Honolulu Fiction Prize, and an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Beacon Street Review, Honolulu Magazine, Crab Creek Review, and Peregrine. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Adam Schuitema’s (issue 5) stories have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines, including Glimmer Train, TriQuarterly, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, The Carolina Quarterly, and The Florida Review. He recently completed a collection titled Freshwater Boys, and is currently at work on Haymaker, a novel. Adam teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife and daughter.

J. D. Smith (issue 4) is a graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. His publications include one collection of poetry, one edited collection, and prose in in American Book Review, Chelsea, Exquisite Corpse, Literal Latte, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Pleiades.

Another author we were privileged to meet at the 2004 AWP conference in Chicago.


Bill Smoot (issue 3) grew up in Maysville, Kentucky. He received his B.A. from Purdue and his Ph.D. from Northwestern. He has published fiction and essays in Ohio Review, The Nation, Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and others. He is currently head of the English Department at the Castilleja School, a prep school in Palo Alto, California. He is also a fine art photographer, and his photographs have been widely exhibited.

Samuel Snoek-Brown (issue 2) and his wife live in Texas, where Samuel teaches composition at two area universities, makes bread, and occasionally turns heavy metal lyrics and oddball news stories into short fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Denton Scramble, Amarillo Bay, Bias Onus Quarterly, and The Rectangle.

Anne Spollen (issue 3) was born and raised in Staten Island, New York and received a masters in English literature from the State University College at New Paltz. Currently, she resides in New Paltz with her husband and three children. Before the kids, she taught middle school. Her stories and poems have appeared in Calyx, Interim, American Writing, Paragraph, The Sulphur River Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, Amelia, The Conneticut Review, and New Works Review.

Maura Stanton (issue 2) won the Richard Sullivan Award from the University of Notre Dame for her collection of stories, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, published in 2002. Her previous collection, The Country I Come From, appeared from Milkweed Editions in 1988. She has also published four books of poetry and a novel. She teaches in the M.F.A. Program at Indiana University.

Mary Stepp (issue 5) of Inez, Kentucky, teaches writing at Big Sandy Community College. She has published poems in The Peralta Press, Poetry Midwest, Limestone, and others, and recently received a $1,000 fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She earned her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University–Carbondale.

Virgil Suarez (issue 1) is the author of four novels: Havana Thursdays, Latin Jazz, The Cutter, and Going Under, three collections of poetry, including his latest, Palm Crows, and a collection of short stories, Welcome to the Oasis. His work regularly appears in national reviews and journals. He teaches creative writing and Latino/a and Caribbean literature at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he lives with his family.


Nova Ren Suma (issue 2) is a 2004 fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has an M.F.A. in fiction from Columbia University. She studied in Kyoto, Japan, in 1996 and now lives in New York City. Her first published story appeared in Gulf Coast. We were very happy that Orchid was the home of “Hanami,” her second published story.

I was happy to meet Nova at the CLMP Lit Mag fair in June of 2003.


Laura Hulthén Thomas (issue 5) teaches creative writing in the Residential College at the University of Michigan. She is the winner of two University of Michigan Hopwood Awards for short fiction. Laura is at work on a novel set in Moscow, Nude in Snow, as well as a short story collection about other bridges in women’s lives.

Carla Tomaso (issue 3) has written three novels: The House of Real Love and Matricide published by Penguin/Plume and Maryfield Academy published by Haworth Press. Her collection of stories, Voyages Out, was published by Seal Press. She lives in Pasadena, California with her partner Mary Hayden and teaches English at Alverno High School.

Alison Umminger (issues 1 & 4 ) Alison Umminger is an Assistant Professor at the University of West Georgia, teaching fiction writing and 20th Century literature. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast. This is her second appearance in Orchid: A Literary Review. The first chapter of a novel, “Alien Life” is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner.

James Ward’s (issue 2) fiction has appeared in The Chrysalis Reader and The Alembic, Province College Literary Journal. He is currently working on a collection of stories. He lives in Morristown, New Jersey, with his wife Barbara.

James is another Orchid author I had the honor of meeting after we’d published his story, “Blossoms and Branches” in issue two of Orchid. The CLMP sponsors a special reading by editors of literary journals as part of their annual Lit Mag Festival. The reading takes place in the periodicals room of the main branch of the New York Public Library (you know the one with the lions in front). I was invited to read at the 2003 Lit Mag Fest. I was only allowed ten minutes and I chose James Ward’s superb short story because it could be read in its entirety in the allotted time. James drove in from New Jersey for the reading and James and I spent several hours after the reading discussing literature in a New York coffee shop. I also met his wife Barbara at the reading. She spent her time shopping while James and I talked.



Debbie Lee Wesselmann’s (issue 1 & 2) short story “Odds and Ends” appeared in Orchid’s inaugural issue and her novella “Vibrissa” appeared in issue two. Her award-winning short fiction has been published by many literary journals, including Other Voices, Florida Review, and Ascent. She has published a novel, Trutor & the Balloonist, and a collection of multicultural stories titled The Earth and the Sky. “Vibrissa” is intended as part of a new collection exploring nontraditional families and relationships in America. Ms. Wesselmann is the recipient of a 2001 New Jersey State Council on the Arts individual fellowship.

Aurelia Wills (issue 2) was raised in Colorado by southern parents, studied philosophy and Russian at UW/Madison, and now lives in Saint Paul with her husband and children. She’s looking for paid work, and waiting for the next story or poem to come out of the blue.

Gary D. Wilson (issue1 ) wrote fiction and taught fiction writing workshops at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore before moving to the Chicago area two years ago. He now writes full time and travels as often as possible with his wife. Wilson’s stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Glimmer Train, Witness, Quarterly West, The Baltimore Review, Kansas Quarterly, Wind, The William and Mary Review, Nimrod, and Sun Dog. His fiction has been anthologized in Street Songs I: New Voices in Fiction from Longstreet Press and in Anyone is Possible from Valentine Press.

Monica Wood (issue 1) had two new books out in Spring 2002: Ernie’s Ark: Stories and The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writing. She is also the author of two novels, My Only Story and Secret Language, and Description, a guide for fiction writers. Her stories have been widely published and anthologized.

Stanley N. Wright (issue1 ) masquerades as an ambitious, rising financial manager at one of America’s larger industrial conglomerates, none of whose executives realize that he is little more than a refugee from the dustbin of literary ambition. He was educated at the College of Charleston and the University of Florida, from which he holds an M.A. in history. He is the husband of one and the father of three. Among other places, his work has appeared in Pleiades and Timber Creek Review.