Student Driven | Nationally Recognized
A magazine of literary arts, faith and culture.


Statement of
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The climate of literary journals has long been dominated by the white male gaze, and Belmont Story Review is committed to publishing stories, poetry, and essays that are inclusive of a diversity of opinions and represent typically underrepresented populations.
Through our editorial discernment, we seek to accept work from typically under-represented groups, whether this is BIPOC, LGTBQIA, ELL or other writers, dreamers, and thinkers.
CURRENT AUTHORS
VOLUME VII
Meghan Beaudry
Meghan Beaudry began writing as part of her rehabilitation from brain trauma in 2014 and simply never stopped. Her work has been published in Hippocampus, Ravishly, TODAY, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. In 2020, she was selected as winner of the Pen 2 Paper Creative Writing Contest in fiction. Meghan blogs for Lupus.net.
Mackenzie Lane
Mackenzie Lane is a program manager in the tech industry. Born in Boston, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. She currently lives and writes in San Francisco.
Rahul Mitra
Rahul Mitra is a writer, artist, and scientist, born in Hyderabad, India. His stories have been published in literary journals—Gowanus, Tell Tales Anthology (UK), and Zone 3 Literary Journal. An excerpt, “River of Immortality (Or How I met my colonizers),” from his unpublished second novel of Nakara quartet has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His scientific papers on cancer therapeutics development have been published in Nature, Cell Discovery, EBioMedicine, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, etc. His artwork is in 50 private collections and has been shown in several galleries and museums across the world. He is currently working on his novel, Sons of Nakara, part of the Nakara quartet.
Heather M. Surls
Heather M. Surls’ nonfiction has appeared in places like Catamaran, RiverTeeth, The Other Journal, Cordella, and Nowhere. She is assistant editor at Anthrow Circus, a mixed media site exploring culture and society through the lens of place. She lives in Amman, Jordan, with her husband and two sons, and is working on a book of literary nonfiction about the Middle East. www.heathersurls.com.
Roy Bentley
Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins as finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize; Starlight Taxi, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, chosen by John Gallaher as winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize; as well as My Mother’s Red Ford: New & Selected Poems 1986 – 2020 published by Lost Horse Press. Poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, and Prairie Schooner among others. His latest is Beautiful Plenty (Main Street Rag, 2021).
Renee Emerson
Renee Emerson is a homeschooling mom of seven, and the author of Church Ladies (forthcoming from Fernwood Press, 2022), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press, 2016), and Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014). Her poetry has been published in Cumberland River Review, Windhover, and Poetry South. She adjunct teaches online for Indiana Wesleyan University, and blogs about poetry, grief, and motherhood at www.reneeemerson.com.
Michael S. Glaser
Michael S. Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004–2009. He is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Columbia Merit Award for service to poetry, and Loyola College’s Andrew White Medal for his dedication to sustaining the poetic tradition. He has edited three anthologies of poetry, co-edited the Complete Poems of Lucille Clifton for BOA Editions, and published several award winning volumes of his own work, most recently Threshold of Light with Bright Hill Publishing (2019). More at www.michaelsglaser.com.
Samina Hadi-Tabassum
Samina Hadi-Tabassum was born in Hyderabad, India and immigrated to Chicago with her family in the early 1970s. Her first book of poems, Muslim Melancholia (2017), was published by Red Mountain Press. She has published poems in the Journal of Postcolonial Literature, Papercuts, The Waggle, Indian Review, Mosaic, Main Street Rag, Pilgrimage, riksha, Clockhouse, The Canopy Review, Tin House, and Souvenir. Her poems were performed on stage in 2017 as a part of the Kundiman Foundation and Emotive Fruition event focusing on Asian American poetry. She also publishes short stories: “Maqbool” was published in New Orleans Review in June 2018 and was a chapter in the New Moons Anthology edited by Kazam Ali; “Lateef” was published in Another Chicago Magazine; “Khalid” was published in Louisville Review; and “Sajid” won the distinguished award in the Best American Short Story Collection 2021 and was originally published in Chicago Quarterly Review.
Cordelia Hanemann
Cordelia Hanemann is currently a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. A former nun from Most Holy Sacrament Convent and a retired professor of English, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Southwestern Review, and California Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine’s new anthology, Friends and Friendship and forthcoming, Adversity, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poems have won awards and been nominated for Pushcarts. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.
Ben Macnair
Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet, produced playwright, journalist, and musician from Staffordshire in the West Midlands. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair.
James Swansbrough
James Swansbrough runs a restaurant repair company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His work has appeared in Free State Review, Cagibi, Freshwater Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Watershed Review, and others. He was named Honorable Mention for the 2019 Yeats Poetry Award by the WB Yeats Society of New York. He lives with his wife and daughters in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, where they tend an organic rainbow glitter farm.