Founded in 1986, Hayden’s Ferry Review is a semi-annual, international literary journal edited by the MFA students at Arizona State University under the guidance of a full-time Senior Editor. HFR is located in Tempe, AZ, on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including Akimel O'odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities. The journal’s namesake is Tempe’s prior name, Hayden’s Ferry, which was named after a ferry service that operated on the Salt River by Charles Trumbull Hayden. Hayden’s Ferry was renamed Tempe, in part, to save the postmaster space and ink needed to mark Hayden’s Ferry on mail. Since 2023, the journal has been produced by graduate and undergraduate students in the HFR literary editing and publishing course and in the HFR internship program.
We publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translation, and art. A small portion of the publication is solicited from established authors, while the majority of our contributors are chosen from the thousands of manuscripts the journal receives each year. In addition to two yearly print issues, HFR publishes online-exclusive web content on The Dock and on the HFR Blog, including web issues, interviews, book reviews, and more. Our sister project, the Thousand Languages Project, is an ever-developing database featuring translations of the work originally appearing in HFR transformed from its original English into manifold world languages.
Work from Hayden’s Ferry Review has been included in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Poetry, and Best New Poets. HFR has notable pieces in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Mystery Stories, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. To find out more about anthologies that have included pieces from Hayden’s Ferry Review, please view our in-progress list (we’re working on updating this soon).
Among the writers and artists who’ve found a home in Hayden’s Ferry Review are Kaveh Akbar, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Matt Bell, Kimberly Blaeser, TC Boyle, Raymond Carver, Lydia Davis, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, Stephen Dunn, Matthew Gavin Frank, Tess Gallagher, Beckian Goldberg, Raquel Gutiérrez, Joseph Heller, Brenda Hillman, B.J. Hollars, Pam Houston, Ken Kesey, Peter LaBerge, Mike Meginnis, Haruki Murakami, Gloria Naylor, Dianne Nelson, Alice Notley, William Olsen, Benjamin Percy, Joy Priest, George Saunders, Jeannine Savard, sam sax, Naomi Shihab Nye, Peggy Shumaker, Jane Smiley, Gary Soto, John Updike, Anne Valente, and Jenny Xie.
Janet Biehl, Tangled Up
Our Mission
HFR looks for well-crafted work that takes risks, challenges readers, and engages us emotionally and artistically. The makeup of our editorial team changes every year, and we pride ourselves on our values of inclusivity and multiplicity, seeking to uplift emerging writers and artists. We are interested in creative work that takes risks with language and form, work that challenges boundaries/borders and systems of power, work that examines historically marginalized experiences, as well as work that identifies as hybrid or genre-nonconforming. As a diverse team of editors, we are invested in highlighting voices traditionally underrepresented in the literary landscape, including writers and artists in BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, TGNC, disabled, and economically marginalized communities. Through our publications and events, we aim to showcase a variety of stylistic and artistic modes.
Land Acknowledgement
Hayden’s Ferry Review and ASU’s four campuses are situated on the unceded ancestral lands of the Akimel O’odham (Pima), Pee Posh (Maricopa), and many other Indigenous peoples. We recognize the original stewards of this land and honor those living here today, including the Gila River Indian Community, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. Furthermore, we recognize that we would not be here today if not for the American occupation of O’odham and Piipaash lands, beginning with the 1854 Gadsden Purchase, which caused a rapidly growing settler population that instigated the “Time of Famine.” We know that a land acknowledgment without action is not sufficient and are making efforts toward equitable practices most immediately by providing a number of free submissions for underrepresented writers for each print issue, keeping our submissions free for web issues, and celebrating Indigenous authors with our 2023 Indigenous Poets Prize.
Editors
Susan Nguyen,
Senior Editor
Susan Nguyen is the author of Dear Diaspora (2021), which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, an Outstanding Achivement Award form the Association of Asian American Studies, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award. She is an alum of ASU’s MFA program.
Frankie Concepcion,
Managing Editor
Frankie Concepcion is a writer from the Philippines and Boston, MA. She is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University and the current Managing Editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review. She has received fellowships from Tin House, Sibling Rivalry Press and the Virginia G. Piper Center of Creative Writing, and her work has been published in Barzakh, StoryQuarterly, and Joyland, amongst others. Her hobbies include crochet and thinking about the end of the world.
Haylee Massengill,
Fiction Editor
Haylee Massengill is a fiction writer and former goat farmer from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University and the Fiction Editor at Hayden's Ferry Review.
Cecilia Savala,
Poetry Editor
Cecilia Savala is originally from the Midwest but currently writes from the desert of Phoenix, AZ. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Poetry South, the Under Review, and the Boiler, among elsewhere. Follow Cecilia at @cecsav on Instagram.
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, Nonfiction Editor
Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is an Anishinaabe writer, beader, fencer, and Jingle Dress Dancer from White Earth Nation in Minnesota. A current Fiction MFA Candidate at Arizona State University, her writing is published or forthcoming from The Iowa Review, Joyland, Passages North, Tahoma Literary Review, CRAFT, and others. Blaeser-Wardzala is a 2022 Tin House Fellow and a 2021 Fellow for the Women’s National Book Association Authentic Voices Program. In 2022, her novel in-progress was shortlisted for the Granum Foundation Prize. She is the current Nonfiction Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @amber2dawn.
Asna Nusrat,
Translations Editor
Asna Nusrat (she/her) is a bilingual writer from Karachi, Pakistan. She mostly writes fiction, nonfiction, and translations in English and Urdu. She has been reading for HFR since 2021 and this year will be serving as the Genre Editor for Translations. As an immigrant writer still new to America and everything American, she sees every experience as a living specimen of translation. Her translations have been published on the Thousand Languages website and forthcoming on Lakeer.
Patrick De Leon,
Art & Web Editor
A writer originally from Southern California, Patrick has called Phoenix, Arizona, home for over a decade and is currently a student at Arizona State University pursuing an MFA in poetry. He has worked for various non-profit organizations and museums in the Phoenix area. He explores queer realities and queerness in conjunction with Catholicism, heterosexuality, and queer futures through his poetic practice. Patrick is also an interdisciplinary artist working in video, printmaking, and photography.
Arya Naidu,
Social Media Manager
Arya Naidu is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan, and is a current MFA candidate at Arizona State University, where she serves as Social Media Manager for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her work explores desire, family, addiction, and the diversity of the South Asian American experience. She is an alumna of the Juniper Institute and Tin House Workshop, and her fiction can be found in Vestal Review and The Bangalore Review.
Associate Editors
Adia Robinson Butler
Adia Robinson Butler is a first-year Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing student and a 2023-2024 Graduate College Enrichment Fellow hailing from the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Her work focuses on the exploration and normalization of race and racial concepts in contemporary and fantasy fiction, with a growing interest in literary fiction. Her other creative mediums include poetry, digital photography, and graphic design. Robinson Butler earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York in May 2022, where she majored in writing with a creative writing concentration and minored in graphic design.
Alvin Le
Alvin Le is a first-year graduate student at Arizona State University and an associate editor in nonfiction at Hayden's Ferry Review. Outside of reading and writing, he enjoys tabletop role-playing games and music.
Carlos Novoa
Carlos Novoa is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University. Originally born in Seattle, Washington, he moved to Phoenix at a very young age and has lived there most of his life. He enjoys reading, writing, and making music.
Issa Marc Shulman
Issa Marc Shulman is a 2nd year fiction writer from Northern California, with a background in interactive media and game design. He misses the cats that used to visit him in his backyard.
Maya Chari
Maya Chari is a MFA candidate in fiction at Arizona State University and an Associate Editor at the Hayden's Ferry Review.
Zack Lesmeister
Zack Lesmeister is a mixed queer Mexican-Vietnamese American poet and filmmaker based out of Arizona. They have earned their BA in Creative Writing as a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently they are a MFA candidate in Poetry at Arizona State University. Zack is a Lambda Literary Fellow and Pushcart Nominated Poet. Their writing is published in The Offing, The Margins, Nimrod, Button Poetry, Rosebud and elsewhere. Their debut film was published by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. You can find more about Zack at zacklesmeister.com or on instagram @cultiv.asian
Editorial Assistants & Readers
Aliyah Griddine
Aliyah Griddine is a Sophomore at Arizona State, majoring in Creative Writing. She is from St. Louis, Missouri. She is also a Black and Creole native. Some of her passions and aspirations include becoming a well-known creative writer and poet and inspiring others to write as well. When Aliyah is not in the classroom, she enjoys reading, spending time outside, cooking Creole cuisine, catching up with friends, learning family history, and strengthening her spiritual health.
Bella Hutchinson
Bella Hutchinson is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University, specializing in Computer Science and English Literature. Bringing the creative writing arts to new and varied audiences is a passion of hers, and she does so by leading community engagement projects like creative writing workshops and poetry performances as president of The Devil's Inkwell. Now, Bella is excited to be working with HFR to learn more about the craft. When Bella isn't hammering away at a creative project, she can be found playing sports on the tennis court or out on the jugger pitch.
Ella Sexton
Ella Sexton is an undergraduate literature student at ASU who has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, all her life. Her aspirations include graduate school, teaching, and authoring, and she is always surrounded by writing works in progress. Outside the classroom she enjoys reading, painting, searching for strange trinkets at thrift stores, and spending time with her cat.
Eric Hall
Eric Hall is a senior studying creative writing at Arizona State. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and native of New Jersey. He has two published works, "Kill Yourself", a dark story about self-destruction, and "The Cats of Africa", a non-fiction story about his time deployed to Niger. He is also currently a writing mentor as part of ASU's writing lab. He also has a budding interest in aquarium-keeping. He does NOT approve of cottage cheese.
Jacki Hyatt
Jacki Hyatt is a sophomore studying Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She is currently writing her first murder mystery novel, inspired by the scary stories that she read as a child. Aside from writing and reading, Jacki enjoys hiking, baking, and listening to music.
Katarina Marčeta
Katarina Marčeta is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing and minoring in Slavic Studies. An Arizona native, most of her work includes fiction and poetry, with a background in editing and journalism. When she isn't writing, she can be found planning her next trip abroad or discovering new novels to read.
Michelle Conde
Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Michelle Conde is an undergraduate at Arizona State University, where she is pursuing a B.A. in creative writing. She is an active contributor to Phoenix Oasis Press’s community blog and a co-host of their podcast, Pop In: A Writer’s Oasis. She is also the lead writer for an upcoming indie game. When not busy with school or other obligations, Michelle enjoys reading, watching videos covering niche topics, and playing video games she never finishes.
Nick Shedd
Nick Shedd is a Junior at ASU, majoring in English with a minor in Business. He's a biracial Korean American, born in San Francisco and raised in Phoenix. He is an avid writer, hiker, gamer, and car enthusiast. He hopes to bring stories to those who share his passion for action and adventure.
Nikolai Ryan
Nikolai Ryan (he/they) is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University pursuing a B.A. in English and a current editorial intern for Hayden’s Ferry Review. In addition to writing, his creative interests include photography, film, and music. His written work primarily focuses on trans and queer culture and media and can be found on Substack at All Things Have Names.
Sarah O’Brien
Sarah O'Brien is a student of life and the world, but more specifically English and History at Arizona State University. She recognizes that there will always be something new to learn, and revels in being challenged, tackling various problems as they present themselves. She is a mother of 2, has 3 feline companions, is an individual of great organization, and aims to always keep an open mind. Her hobbies are varied, but cycle throughout the year primarily between gardening, spinning, painting, reading, writing, ongoing food preservation, sewing, and crocheting. She is a passionate fan of the Oxford comma.
Sierra Bravo
Sierra Bravo is a junior at Arizona State University. An English and Film Studies major, she enjoys reading, writing, and watching movies. She is passionate about gender equality in film and media, frequently focusing on this topic in her academic essays. Upon earning her degree, Sierra plans to pursue career opportunities in copy editing and film analysis.
Tyler Throckmorton
Tyler Throckmorton is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University pursuing his bachelor's degree in English. He enjoys reading and writing all things fiction (especially the dark kind). Outside of the classroom Tyler can be found hiking, hitting the gym, or playing videogames. As a side note, he also knows how to make a pretty darn good coffee.
With special thanks to our partners…
Hayden’s Ferry Review is supported by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, which offers readings, talks, workshops, and other literary programs for the larger community.
Hayden’s Ferry Review is supported by Arizona State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, housed within the English Department, and edited by the MFA students there.
The Thousand Languages Project is a multilingual translation database exploring the art and scholarship of literary translation. The project will feature creative and critical work drawn from the publishing catalogue of Hayden's Ferry Review.