masthead
se harsha
Founder & Editor-in-chief
SE Harsha is a writer, visual artist, musician, (comedienne?), and graphic & instructional designer with roots in North Carolina and Minnesota. In May 2019, she graduated with an MFA in Fiction from UNC-Wilmington, where she received the Margaret Shannon Morton Fellowship, and founded Press Pause with 50 posters strewn around campus. You can find her short fiction at Carve Magazine, The Adirondack Review, Terminus, Hobart Pulp, Subnivean, and others.
caitlin rae taylor
Art Director and Designer
Caitlin Rae Taylor is a writer, editor, and designer based in the southern United States. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she served as the fiction editor for Ecotone and the publishing assistant for Lookout Books. She has also worked with nonprofit press Milkweed Editions and was a resident at the Taleamor Park Writers and Artists Residency near LaPort, Indiana. She is the managing editor for the literary magazine Southern Humanities Review. Her fiction, book reviews, and interviews can be found or are forthcoming in Cotton Xenomorph,Pacifica, Adroit, Hobart, Moon City Review, the Alabama Writers Forum, Southern Humanities Review online, and Germ Magazine. She is at work on a novel.
raye hendrix
Poetry Editor
Raye Hendrix is a writer from Alabama. Raye is the author of the micro-chapbook, Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press), and the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and Southern Indiana Review’s 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award. Raye’s work has appeared in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and elsewhere. She holds degrees from Auburn University and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Raye currently lives in the Pacific Northwest where she is a PhD student at the University of Oregon studying Deafness, Disability, and Poetry.
winnu das
Reader
Winnu is a performer, writer and lawyer. She has worked in the areas of labour rights and gender and LGBTQ issues. Passionate about performing arts and embodied work, she is a dance trainer and a member of citylamps playback theatre. You can find more about her work at kallikaaka.wordpress.com.
laurel jones
Reader
Laurel lives in Wilmington, NC with the love of her life, one dog, one cat, and far too many houseplants. She graduated in 2015 with her MFA in Creative Writing from UNCW. There she acted as the Ecotone poetry editor for two years and taught creative writing classes for six years. She currently works in financial technology, though does her best to remain creative in her daily life.
kathryn m. Barber
Editorial Director
Kate Barber grew up and is still based in the south, having called the states of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi home. She earned degrees at UNC Wilmington (MFA), Mississippi State University (MA), and Carson-Newman University (BA). Previously, she interned for Lookout Books and served in various editorial roles at Ecotone magazine and the Jabberwock Review. She is also currently an associate editor for Southern Humanities Review. Her work appears in The Masters Review, Blue Earth Review, Moon City Review, The Pinch, Helen, Door is a Jar, and elsewhere.
kate@presspausepress.org
Maryann aita
Nonfiction Editor
Maryann Aita (rhymes with beta) is a writer and performer in Brooklyn, New York, and the nonfiction editor for Press Pause. Her essay collection, Little Astronaut, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in spring 2022. Her work has appeared in Press Pause, as well as PANK Magazine, which earned a 2020 Best of the Net Nomination, The Porter House Review, The Exposition Review, and Perhappened Magazine, among other journals. She also wrote and performed My Dysfunctional Vagina, a one-woman comedy show, and often performs around New York City. She has an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College and lives with three cats.
Sushanti bordoloi
Reader
Sushanti hails from Assam, India (where tea comes from) and has been living in Brooklyn, NYC, in the same apartment for over a decade. She has not moved from her place, primarily due to the overwhelming amount of books in her apartment. Her background is in media, writing, and filmmaking. She was the chief artist liaison at an Art Council and booked, presented, and conceptualized book launches and dance, music, and film festivals. She is working on a series of short stories and is still in pursuit of being in an apartment big enough to hold all her books and, most definitely, a dog.
laura dellabadia
Reader
Laura DellaBadia is a writer, editor, dancer, and a licensed North Carolina attorney. She graduated Campbell Law School after graduating from the University of North Carolina Wilmington magna cum laude with a B.A. in Communication Studies, a B.F.A. in Creative Writing, and the Certificate in Publishing. Her background experiences have largely focused on law (intellectual property and corporation/business), broadcast and print journalism, publishing, editing, film production, theater, and dance. She actively writes fictional novels and short stories with themes of family, identity, psyche, and love. Her award-winning short stories have appeared in various literary magazines.
sewit mesfen
Reader
Sewit Mesfen is a fiction writer, technical writer, and essayist. She spent most of her life in Las Vegas, Nevada before taking the leap to North Carolina. When not writing, she can be found exploring abandoned structures, creating (and subsequently destroying) multimedia art, and finding independent bookstores.