Editor in Chief, Samantha Frank
Samantha Frank, a senior from Massachusetts, Texas, and Illinois, is majoring in English in the creative writing track and minoring in studio art and gender studies. Her current scholarship and creative practice have led her to explore nonsexual intimacy and relationships in her writing and art. Her multi-media exhibition, Attachments, curated by Otis Heimer, appeared in the James K. Schmidt Gallery at Principia College in February of 2019. She recently presented a poster on the effects of ‘compulsory sexuality’ and ‘amatonormativity’ on the asexual community at the 82nd annual Midwest Sociological Society conference in Chicago. She previously served as Mistake House Magazine’s Fiction Editor. Though she never had imaginary friends growing up, she has always lived closely with whatever characters she’s writing about, often rewriting scenes in her head while traveling or waiting.
Managing Editor, Jade Sperr
Jade Sperr is a senior majoring in the English in the creative writing track at Principia College. She hails from Huntsville, Alabama, where she transferred from the University of Alabama-Huntsville to Principia in 2018. Adopted from China into a European and Native American household and living in a place considered atypical of The South, she is interested in exploring otherness, and liminal spaces. Her fiction writing takes inspiration from mythology and folk lore. She enjoys examining outliers and the constructed morality of heroes and villains. In her time off she collaborates with others to explore fantastical worlds and improvised situations.
Online Editor, Della Christy
Della Christy is a sophomore English major in the creative writing track. She speaks with the sweet, slow drawl of the South United States. With William Faulkner and Eudora Welty as inspirational Mississippi writers for her growing up, she enjoys the small joke through her creative writing practice that “Southerners not only can read, they can also write.” In her short fiction, she likes exploring the intimate, vulnerable parts of humans’ inner selves that find conflict with their external environments. With the inner self as her writing voice, she hopes to continue her study of writing and storytelling’s ability to open and connect human hearts to one another.
Soap Bubble Set Editor, Grant Lee
Grant Lee is a poet from Eastern Tennessee, where he spent most of his childhood in a valley near Appalachia. In high school he attended boarding school in St. Louis, MO, and from there moved on to Principia College in Southern Illinois to study poetry. Grant was given the opportunity to study art and writing abroad in Prague, Czech Republic in the Fall of 2016, which sparked his deep love for the visual arts and inspired him to work towards becoming a “writer of conscience.” In the Summer of 2018 Grant worked as an intern at The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, UK, giving guided tours of William Wordsworth’s home, undertaking research on one of the paintings in the museum’s collection, and—of course—writing poetry. Grant is currently interested in exploring the importance of identity in his poetry and identity’s relation to the boundless cosmos.
Fiction Editor, Sean Hannan
Sean Hannan is from St. Louis, Missouri and is currently a junior majoring in English in the creative writing track. Over the past year, he has grown increasingly interested in obsessive characters through his practice in writing short fiction and screenwriting, as well as the operation of time in writing. He plays third base on the Principia Panthers’ baseball team. In June and July of 2018, he studies archeology in Malta on a Principia Abroad. He spends most of his spare time watching films or producing his own short films.
Poetry Editor, Slater Smith
Slater Smith is a sophomore majoring in English in the creative writing track and minoring in mass communications. This fall, he will be traveling to Prague, Czech Republic, to study Czech literature, studio art, and creative writing. He has written for Principia’s on campus newspaper, The Pilot, and also wrote for his high school newspaper in Carlsbad, California. He has been writing creatively since the age of 12, but he has been focused on writing poetry since he started college at Principia in 2017. Slater’s poetry explores space, time and religion, and their influence on humanity. When he is not writing, Slater enjoys staying active by playing pick-up basketball or lifting weights.
MH Editor, Brendan O’Hagan
Brendan O’Hagan is a junior at Principia College. He is currently studying English in the creative writing track and plans to graduate in spring 2020. He has written and performed for the college’s Studio 207 theater group and has appeared in several one-acts on campus. Over the summer between his freshman and sophomore years he studied abroad in Ireland where he did extensive devised theater work.
MH Editor, James Fisher
James (Jamie) Fisher is from Chicago, Illinois. A junior majoring in Business with an interest in arts management and a minor in education, Jamie is looking to pool his many interests into one place: helping to educate, entertain, and give back to the world around him. He is currently fascinated with the power of color in his poetry and visual art. After a concussion, Jamie found a mostly dormant synesthesia come to life, weaving its way into numerous parts of his experiences, including his writing. He is inspired by the music to which he listens and the people with whom he is closest. Writing has always been an escape for Jamie, and he is grateful to have been a new staff member this year, allowing him to, as he says, “…give back to the writing that has continually given to me.”
Faculty Advisor, Dinah Jung Ryan
Photos and digital editing done by JC Vogt, a Principia College Art major