Masthead

Dini McCullough Amozurrutia, Founding Editor

Dini McCullough Amozurrutia is a lawyer, writer, and artist. Her writing has appeared in The Más Tequila Review, Kweli Journal, Bartleby Snopes, The Toast, Literal Magazine, and PANK. Her story “Amalia on the Border” was a finalist in The Texas Observer’s 2013 Short Story Contest, judged by Dagoberto Gilb, and “Elsa & Segundo” placed second in Bethesda Magazine’s annual short story contest in 2017. She is a two-time recipient of the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County Individual Artist Award.

She has led writers’ retreats in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and her visual art can be found at mexilandesigns.com, and currently writes on Substack at The Quiet Kitchen. She is also the founder of Dini’s Divine Pies, a small pie company in Maryland where food, storytelling, and community intersect.

Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Editor-In-Chief

Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press), When Trying to Return Home (Counterpoint Press) and Recognition (‘27), short story collections, Neon Steel ('26) (Cornerstone), a speculative collection, and the poetry collections Kinds of Grace (Flowersong Press),the VERSUS('27) and TUMBAO ('29), both on Texas Review Press. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (prose), CantoMundo (poetry), Kimbilio (fiction) and Sundress Academy for the Arts (hybrid) and her work has been a New York Times Editors' Choice and a Must-Read by Bookshop, Elle, Popsugar, HipLatina and others. She has poetry, fiction and non-fiction published or forthcoming in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Nimrod and Columbia Journal, amongst others. She is seasonal faculty at Yale Writers’ Workshop and an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she teaches poetry and fiction in their MFA program.

The following individuals previously served

in editorial roles at Origins Journal:

Armando Rodriguez

Armando is a graphic designer, visual artist, and photographer based in Houston, Texas. He is an art instructor at the Art League of Houston in addition to teaching art to children and youth throughout the metropolitan area. He is also the founder and owner of Taller ISMA, a printmaking and art studio.

Susan Agar, Fiction Editor

Susan is a writer and has had work published in the KGB Bar Lit Magazine, Origins, Solstice, Sante Fe Writers Project, Haunted Waters Press and was a Top-25 finalist in Glimmer Train’s 2014 Fiction Open. She has an M.A. in English Literature from London University, and an A.B. from Sarah Lawrence College, and is working on a short fiction collection.

Seema Reza, Nonfiction Editor

Seema is the author of “When the World Breaks Open,” a memoir of essays and poetry published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2016. Based outside of Washington, DC, she is the Chair of Community Building Art Works and coordinates and facilitates a unique multi-hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization among a population struggling with emotional and physical injuries. An alumnus of Goddard College and VONA, her writing has appeared in print and on-line in Entropy, The Feminist Wire, Bellevue Literary Review, The Offing, Full Grown People, and The Nervous Breakdown among others.

Mary Kay Zuravleff, Craft Column Editor

Mary Kay is a novelist whose latest book, Man Alive!, was named a Washington Post Notable Book. She is the recipient of American Academy’s Rosenthal Award, James Jones Society’s First Novel Award, and numerous DC Commission on the Arts Fellowships. Mary Kay serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, helped launch DC Women Writers, and cofounded NoveltyDC, which offers master classes in writing and revising the novel. (www.mkzuravleff.com)

Kandice Cole, Reader

Kandice is a writer and consultant, most recently with the literary nonprofit, Narrative 4. She received her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Education from the University of Chicago. She is currently working on her first novel, a work of historical fiction set during World War II. Kandice resides in the Chicagoland area with her husband and daughter.

Bruce Kriegman, Reader

Bruce obtained his B.A. with honors at Carleton College where he served as an editor of the literary magazine. He is an alumni of the GWU-Jenny Moore writers' workshop. He has a J.D. from Georgetown University where he won the ASCAP Nathan Burkan Memorial prize for a law article on copyright protection for fictional characters.

Rani Neutill, Reader

Rani is a former academic who was a professor of Film and English Literature at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins. Her work has appeared in Salon, The New York Times Book Review, The Nervous Breakdown and Entropy Magazine. She is working on a transnational memoir about fractured identity, being biracial in both India and the United States, and her relationship with her mentally ill Bengali immigrant mother. She is a student in the Memoir Incubator at Grub St. in Boston.

Joyy Norris, Reader

Joyy is a snobby cinephile, with a love of the written word and penchant for exploring its hidden treasures. This Chicago-based freelance writer and poet has published work on the digital platforms Black Girl Nerds, Gloss Magazine, Bentlily, and is prone to write a post or two for personal blogs, A Modern Guide to Living and On Second Thought Reviews. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Documentary Filmmaking at Northwestern University to pursue a life-long dream of producing films that re-engage audiences in the overlooked landscapes and stories around us.

Samantha Herath, Reader

Samantha graduated with a BS in Mathematics and with a Creative Writing Minor, which specialized in poetry. During her time at UMBC, she was poetry editor for the creative writing and arts magazine, Bartleby, and participated in spoken word events. She is currently a computational and systems biology researcher based in Baltimore, Maryland and a 2018 Teach for America corps member. She will be teaching high school mathematics in New Haven, Connecticut. While balancing the interdisciplinary life of a researcher and the transitioning life of a future teacher, she continues to try to foster her love for reading and writing.

Samantha Liming, Editorial Intern

Samantha graduated St. Mary’s College of Maryland as a double major in English and French. While there, she worked to publish AVATAR, the school’s literary magazine, as well as with the VOICES Reading Series. In the spring of 2017, she was the recipient of the Gail West Parmentier Arts Alliance Award for Creative Writing. She has also worked with the Chesapeake Writer’s Conference and read with The Inner Loop. She currently also interns at Beltway Poetry Quarterly.