Staff Masthead

Leah Angstman started Alternating Current Press in the early 90s, when she was a mere 13 years old (don’t do the math!), and she started The Coil around 2012 as a catch-all for all the blogs, online journals, and loose ends that the press had published since its inception. Leah is old-school Midwestern by nature (Midwesterners were friendly once!), and she’s made up of equal parts Broadway musicals, French Revolution trivia, Colorado Avalanche and women’s ice hockey, 1930s-Hollywood Canadian Mounties, nautical lore, German Shepherd fur, Bruce Springsteen, celebrity boyfriends who don’t know they’re her boyfriends, mountain hikes, chai lattés, punk rock, comic books, exclamation points!, American history lessons between 1636 and 1901 minus the Civil War, and a lineage of English teachers. She reads cholera death records and 1800s land deeds for fun, and she’s either not the person you bring to the party, or she’s exactly the person you bring. Professionally, she has also been an editor/fact-checker for Pacific Standard, Underscore News, Mother Jones, Departures, and Smithsonian, and she is the author of Out Front the Following Sea, Shoot the Horses First, Falcon in the Dive, and the forthcoming The Only Way to Cheat a Hangman, Reverse Migration: not coming home, and The Sighs of Women Becoming.

Torgo (sable German Shepherd) is a graduate of the University of Collarado (Go, Barkaloes!), where he received his Dogtorate in Anthropawlogy with a minor in Barketing. He considers himself an armchair s’collar of Ruffsian Literature, naming Fyodor Dogstoyevsky, Boris Pawsternak, and Vladimir Nabarkov among his favorites. (We tell him to read more women, but he says they aren’t punny enough. Boys, amiright?)

Laika (black German Shepherd) almost received her Barkchelor’s in Wagriculture, but she ended up dropping out of Front Mange Community College to pursue a life in the Fine Farts. After a second brief attempt at Arapawhoe Community College, she found her way back to nature, and now she’s a full-time Woofworker, sculpting chew sticks out of tree limbs. Her motto in life is WHY SO SERIOUS?, so she’s an enjoyer of George Bernard Paw, Bark Twain, Jane Pawsten, and Margaret Atwoof.

Kulthum Ikram Abubakar is a writer and English tutor whose love for language runs deep. She believes great writing isn’t just about style; it is shaped by the eras it emerges from and the history beneath it. Growing up entering poetry competitions, she now spends her time annotating poems simply for the joy of pulling apart each line.

She is fascinated by the way history and literature mirror each other, whether through Shakespeare’s political undercurrents, the emotional depth in Hosseini’s novels, or the raw introspection of Plath’s poetry. She is especially moved by writing with emotional weight and historical context, where feeling and form work hand in hand. She reads widely, from classic fiction to contemporary essays, always in search of work that stirs something real. Outside of words, she finds comfort in cats, quiet corners, and anything that stretches the imagination.

Amber Terranova is a grad student, writer, and editor from Long Island. As a proud New Yorker, she loves a good BEC (if you know, you know), the use of excessive hand gestures while talking, and walking at a maximum speed everywhere she goes. She is currently earning an MFA from Lindenwood University in Missouri and expects to graduate in the spring of 2026. When she’s not preoccupied with writing workshops and seminars, she’s usually walking her cats or shopping for antiques. She also, unapologetically, is obsessed with all things quintessentially British: sarcastic humor, afternoon teas, The Great British Bake Off, Jane Austen, Downton Abbey, Elton John, and Premier League football (Go, Chelsea!). Amber is an assistant editor for The Lindenwood Review for the 2024/2025 school year. In addition, she has done freelance writing and content creation for her local library, mainly on environmental, culinary, and cultural topics for K-12 educational activities and events.