Our Team

Emily Townsend’s works have appeared in Superstition Review, South Dakota Review, carte blanche, Alternating Current, LIT Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, Orion and others. Managing nonfiction editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine, she also has editing experience and worked on ten titles. A previous nominee for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and Best of the Net, she is currently tinkering with essays and poems in the Pacific Northwest.

  Icess Fernandez is an educator, writer, podcaster, and a former journalist. She is a graduate of Goddard College’s MFA program and the University of Houston.
Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective’s anthology Notes from Humanity. Her Houston-based story, “Happy Hunting,” was recently published in the Houston Noir anthology. Her podcast, Dear Reader, is based on the popular blog of the same name. Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She’s currently working on her first novel and finishing her memoir, Problematic.

 Jerre van den Bent, PT received his training as a physical therapist in his native Holland. He came to Texas in 1993, and has worked in pediatric home care since then. Jerre is passionate about the work that he does and is committed to supporting the families of the children he works with. In May of 2001, Jerre launched THERAPY 2000 out of the basement of his home. Since that time, THERAPY 2000 has become a thriving company providing in-home pediatric services to families across Texas. The company currently provides services to more than 1800 families with a workforce of almost 300 physical, occupational and speech therapists. Jerre is a passionate volunteer for the Texas Physical Therapy Association and the Texas Association for Home Care and Hospice TAHC&H). He serves on TAHC&H Political Action Committee Advisory Board. He has served as the North Texas District of the Texas Physical Therapy Association, as membership co-chair for the Texas Chapter and is currently serving as fundraiser for TPTA’s Political Action Committee. Jerre received TPTA’s President’s Award in 2008, and was honored in 2010 with TPTA’s highest honor, the Jeanette Winfree award, in recognition of the growth in membership that resulted of his leadership. Since 1997, Jerre has been active in the American Physical Therapy Association’s Health Policy and Administration Section, pursuing learning and growth opportunities through the LAMP (Leadership, Administration, Management and Professionalism) Institute. He earned his Certificate in Leadership development in 2011. In 2012, he became HPA’s first recipient of the “LAMP lighter Leadership award”. This award recognizes those individuals who have affected significant change through formal or informal leadership roles. Jerre regularly travels to Austin to meet with Texas legislators, advocating on behalf of the profession of physical therapy and on behalf of home based pediatric therapy. In his free time, Jerre can be found working in his yard, listening to opera, or pursuing his newest passion, sand volleyball. He has very recently started working on his new long term goal of becoming the Dutch dog whisperer by training his three shepherd mutts, though truth be told, he is currently more of a Dutch dog yeller than whisperer. 

 Katie Truong holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a M.S. in Engineering Management from The University of Texas at Arlington.   She currently works as a Product Manager for NICE, an analytics company helping organizations realize the amazing possibilities through purpose-built CX Analytics, AI, and domain expertise. 

Residing in Coppell, Texas with her husband and their daughter, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends and being involved with her youth group functions.  

With appreciation for Master Oogway’s quote from the Kung Fu Panda movie – “Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, but Today is a gift.  That is why it’s called the Present,” she practices living in the moment and being grateful.