Meet the people behind Five Points:

Megan Sexton, Editor

Megan Sexton’s (Editor) collection of poems, Swift Hour, received the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry and was published by Mercer University Press. Her chapbook, Insects & Mystics, was awarded the Redbone Press Prize. Her poetry and nonfiction have been widely published in anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, The Literary Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the PEN/Newman First Amendment Award, Georgia Author of the Year,  and has received a fellowship from the Hambidge Center; she is a member of the Mellon Foundation funded Beyond Bars editorial team. She directs the New York Field School and teaches in the Department of English at Georgia State University.

Olivia Ivings, Managing Editor

Olivia Ivings (Managing Editor) is a graduate of the M.F.A. program in poetry at University of Florida. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Passengers Journal, FOLIO, Door=Jar, and Bellevue Literary Review.

Erin Carlyle, Assistant Editor

Erin Carlyle (Assistant Editor) is a poet whose roots are in the American South. Her poetry often explores the connections between poverty, place, and girlhood, and can be found in journals such as Arts and Letters, Tupelo Quarterly, Jet Fuel, and Prairie Schooner. Her debut full-length collection, Magnolia Canopy Otherworld, won the annual Driftwood Press Poetry Manuscript Contest and was published in December of 2020. She has two cats and a new puppy and is currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at Georgia State University. 

Kate Easley, Assistant Editor

Kate Easley (Assistant Editor) is in her third year of the MFA in fiction program. She is currently into feminist fabulist and speculative fiction. She likes to do tarot readings in her spare time.

Meg Fancher, Assistant Editor

Meg Fancher (Assistant Editor) earned her BA at Hollins and her MFA at Oregon State. She is currently working on a novel about art forgery and enjoys stories with a strong voice.

Leah Franqui, Assistant Editor

Leah Franqui (Assistant Editor) is a graduate of Yale University and received an MFA at NYU-Tisch. A Puerto Rican-Jewish native of Philadelphia, Franqui now lives in Atlanta where she is pursuing her PhD at GSU in creative writing. She is the author of America for Beginners, Mother Land and After the Hurricane.

Karen Javits, Assistant Editor

Karen Javits (Assistant Editor) is an MFA candidate in Poetry and teaches composition and creative writing at Georgia State University. She has a long teaching career and has worked in editorial with Scholastic and Harcourt School publishers. She won an International Merit award for her poem from the Atlanta Review and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the Sewanee Writers Conference. Karen enjoys hanging out with her family in Decatur, GA and visiting the mountains, lakes, or an ocean.

Merrick Preti, Assistant Editor

Merrick Preti (Assistant Editor) is a VB native who is currently residing in Atlanta while she is attending her PhD program. She is a former collegiate rugby player who now spends her time split between working in digital marketing, reading, and writing fiction.

Karen Sims, Assistant Editor

Karen Sims (who also goes by Suqi) (Assistant Editor) is a PhD student in fiction at Georgia State University. She has published food writing and nonfiction, and maybe this is the year for her short stories. Read her work at suqikarensims.com or follow her “rejections” highlights @suqikaren on Instagram. As a reader, she’s been in the mood for twisted fairytales and story cycles.

Isaiah Underwood, Assistant Editor

Isaiah Underwood (Assistant Editor) is currently a first year graduate student pursuing a MFA in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in Maximum Tilt and Sphere Magazine. He is a native of Cleveland, Ohio and has experienced both the trauma and triumph of the Cleveland Browns, Cavaliers, and (now) the Guardians. When he is not writing or editing, he enjoys dabbling in graffiti drawing on canvas, sketching, singing, and recording music in the studio. His favorite genres are pop, hip-hop, indie rock, R&B, and alternative.